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:, ,/, , '-'--'7 (' The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee r r: CENTER FOR TWENTIETH CENTURY STUDIES .... P. O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 5320 I Telephone (414) 963-4141 Working Paper No.7 "Counting From 0 to 6: Lacan and the Imaginary Order" ELLIE RAGLAND-SULLIV AN Ellie Ragland-Sul1ivan is Associate Professor of French at the U ni- versity of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Rabelais and Panw-ge: A Psychological Approach to Literary Character (1976). Her book, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, is forthcom- ing from the Univ. of Illinois Press. She is currently at work on a new book on post-structuralist poetics. This wOl"king paper was originally presented at the conf"el'elu:e on Lacan, held at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies em Apl'il I;), 19H / l, and is fort h(,()lllillg ill T/u'J;\mmalo/htftllliulI Stutlit'.v,

Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

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~)

---7 ( The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee r

r ~r ~ CENTER FOR ~ TWENTIETH CENTURY STUDIES

~ P O Box 413 Milwaukee WI 5320 I Telephone (414) 963-4141

Working Paper No7

Counting From 0 to 6 Lacan and the Imaginary Order

ELLIE RAGLAND-SULLIV AN

Ellie Ragland-Sul1ivan isAssociate Professor of French at the U nishyversity of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Rabelais and Panw-ge A Psychological Approach to Literary Character (1976) Her book Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis is forthcomshying from the Univ of Illinois Press She is currently at work on a new book on post-structuralist poetics

This wOlking paper was originally presented at the confelelue on Lacan held at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies em Aplil I) 19Hl and is fort h(()lllillg ill TuJmmalohtftllliulI Stutlitv

II

Counting From Oto 6 The Lacanian Imaginary Order

ELLIE RAGLAND-SULLIVAN

Lacan sta~~d that the three dimensions of unconscious space are mathematical instead of intuitive (1 Kant) Moreover the unshyconscious can count up to 6 and not beyond 1 My interpretation of Lacans theory requires a clarification of what I understand by the Imaginary order not only because the Imaginary fogs up the tershyrain between conscious and unconscious realms but also because Lacan used Symbolic-order models when referring to unconscious coullting numher-settheory Fregean mathematics knot theory and so on Yet UllcollsdollS numbers are descriptive of realities conshy(erning the human su~ject who is only rePT(~sented in the Symbolic order while being excluded from that order2 Moreover a sul~jecls conscious self knowledge (formaiwma) is merely supposed

rhe link between Symbolic pre-suppositions and unconscious knowledge (savoir) is what I have called an Imaginary text Such a

text tries to wed the being of language to the non-being of objects through conscious meanings (significations) which infer their own asymmetrical double meaning (sens) in the unconscious If the human subject is only re-presented in the Symbolic order of conshyscious life but finds its Real re~fents in the unconscious then the mediate Imaginary text cannot e dismissed Indeed I find evidence in the Imaginary excluded ml die of normative tendencies by which individuals reify narcissism and seek to realize Desire the propensity to identify with images with a species with a name with a sexual gender myth with others in bonding-type relations with ones own children with a family line and finally with some transshycendental principle such as God Lacan taught that such a tr~ectory obfuscates unconscious truth however through the denials of language and the misrecognition of the roots of identity Lacan thus criticized those analysts and ego psychologists who reify the I maginary at the expense of knowledge of the unconscious By norshylIIalizing SYIIIPIOiIlS Ihey equal love mlttlTiage and parclliing as

impersonal categories of psychic health thus mistaking the Imagishynary circle of fantasy for the unconscious Desire w hkh has already made the Imaginary dissymmetrical 3

Unconscious spacemiddot as conceived by Lacan is not innate (cf Kant) but is created by the effects of the outer world I shall argue that Lacans six numbers mark the Real impact on humans of a neurological and physiological prematuration at birth followed by compensatory perceptu~l mergers and subsequent psychic separashytion In The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number Ernst Cassirer wrote The number is inherent in perception as are space and time Everything that exists in space lime also exists in numbermiddot I hope to show instead that the number is inferred the manner in which perception is structured from which its unconshyscious limitations are derived Thus seen number would not arise as natural representation of the body or denote asymmetry 01 harshymony between mother and child Nor would it be a representation of the stars or a link between biological realities and emotion Number would point rather to a dissymmetry in human knowlshyedge by which Lacan reinterpreted Freges paradox Even though the unconscious subject is produced and unified by language unshyconscious letters do not directly condition the relative order of spoken discourse6

In my view the six numbers would denote mirror-stage and Oedipal structures They are referents around which societies orshyganize themselves moving individuals along a blind signifying chain where they represent themselves to one another as objects of love or Desire As representative signifiers human subjects are tethered to the object (alA) then and not to a specific totalized identity7 Unconscious numbers become f((inctional operators of the Imaginary signifier for identity which p(~tiol1s the su~ject as an object in conscious life object of its own unconscious constitution In 1966 Lacan said that just as language is constituted by a set of fishynite signifiers- ba ta pa etc - probably the process of integers is only a special case of this relation between signifiers the collection ofwhich constitutes the Other (A)8 That is meaning is made by opshypositions be it verbal or numerical This brings us to Lacans applishycation of Freges discovery to the constitution of human mentality Frege uncovered a paradox the fact that every natural number has something before it and something after it This contradiction stopped him from counting beyond 011 a recursive function being implicit in his axiom

Frege postulated that the 0 the number and the successor function in constituting the series of natural numbers (Miller Sushyture p 27) When applied to a logic of the signifier Freges

middot

philosophical mathematics show the conscious subject being proshyduced as effect rather than already there as cause In its functionshying both anticipation and retroaction are always in play In his essay on Suture Jacques-Alain Miller defines suture as miscognition based on repression or the general relation of lack to the structure of which lack is an element (p 26) Identity is structured as a set of mathematical units and is not to be confused with personality thought of as a unified or fixed singularity or enduring substance9

Miller explains that 0 is ssigned to the concept which is not identical with itself to the concept as the extension of itself n + 1 0 renders lack visible and grounds truth which lies in the identical that is where the subject is a structure of repetition (pp 30-31) For someshything to be re-peated in conscious life it must have already been stated elsewhere This proposition sutures logical discourse (pp 29shy30) Thus a logic Of the signifier orders both human identity and relations And suture designates the relation between the Real and the Symbolic naming the relation of the subject to the chain of its discourse (p 25)

I w()uld describe miscognition as the basis of an I magi nary text a spreading of the suture effect across a persons life story The source of such effect lies in the Real of the signifiers in the unconshyscious which Lacan once called the caput mortuum ofthe autonomous signifier caput mortuum being an alchemical term for the residuum after distillation 1() This residue provides a doubling effect doublure meaning a kind oflining or understudy within the conscious subject Along these same lines Lacan said any dr~ourse of a subject is imshypure (Sem II p 352) We remembe~hat Lacan rejected the phenomenological idea that pure perception could exist in the Real and relocated it between the Real and the Symbolic Moreover pershyception was equated with a structured Imaginary which lives out the unconscious - albeit unawares - through fantasies equatable with reality In this sense the Imaginary becomes the others knowledge (S2) in relation to which a subject gives linguistic substantivity to the moi to representations and to the dead messages in the Other (A)

Lacan depicted the Imaginary function in adult life as mediatshying relations through the narcissistic captivation of the moi in idenshytificatory fusions Psychic development occurs in reference to others - transference - and not by means of impersonal developmental or biological mechanisms If unconscious numbers mark diachronic spaces in conscious life which denote the evolution ofidentificatory (Imaginary) relations - through varied Symbolic interpretations shytheoretical impasses in Lacan will become clearer impasses such as the hypothesis that the system oflanguage itself closes out truthful unconscious knowledge and that the substitmive o~jects of Desire

~

conceal the character of their true functioll to fill up lack hy creshyating a closure which resembles fullness I f indeed the Symbolic has defined a subject even before his birth then from its genesis subshyjectivity does not exist in a direct rapport to the Real Instead it exists in relation to a triumphant syntax which engenders a signifyshying mark (Ecrits 1966 p 50) That is the Symbolilt im poses its order on the Real Yet it is not homophonic or transparent signitiers which will reveal a link between the Symbolic and Real but the primitive symbolism which joins unconscious numbers in a strucshytured sequence that relates to a binary symbol

From a Kantian viewpoint the conscious subject would be the phenomenon (appearance) while the unconscious would contain das Ding an sich (the noumenon) or the Real subject 11 Kants subject leaves us suspended however between the Real and the phenoshymenal leaving out the Imaginary realm which connects the two But the Imaginary infuses ambiguity emotional content and Desire into concrete language Lacan said thus creating an inertia and conshyfusion in ordinary discourse (Sem II pp 351 353) When one realizes that the Imaginary thrust involves the mois efforts to verify its own ideal ego (as a unity) despite the obstacle of the Other (A) which always breaks up this moi propensity as well as the refusals of ego ideals (others) to lend permanent solidity tomoi fictions one sees why the Imaginary lends confusion But insofar as the Imagishynary is structured by repetition Igression and transference and is resistant to change then its mairrrer of functioning becomes an important focus for studying the effects of the unconscious on omshysclous life

Lacan said that the scope of the Symbolic within the umonshyscious is organized by successive unities which delimit the subject as a unity of meaning or as a meaningful unity (Sem II p 227) But this Symbolic interprets the Real thus structuring the Imaginary where perception and reality reside Here we can see the difference between a radical order of the Symbolic (as in mathematical symshybols) and that of the Imaginary which derives from the Real of natushyral symbols (the stin a tree and so on) If we take the first moment an infant perceives (sees or hears) as the start of a structuration of perception then we can make sense of Lacans notion that the bishynary symbol is essential to unconscious counting 0 represents an abshysence - a moment preceding repetition - but by its very notation imshyplies a presence 1 (Sem XX p 122) We are in the realm of paradox The game of the symbol presence or absence - organizes this something which calls itself asubject The issues of identity and mental causation become a mediation between a chain of symbols and the Real is it going to be this or that (Sem II p 226) Although

o is introduced to figure the numbers that will follow there is no rational reason for a 0 designation for a denotation of absence of numbers Even so the Phoenicians discovered 0 many centuries beshyfore Christ thus determining that counting not be random (trishybal)12 In 1964 Lacan said that 0 denotes the presence of the human subject which totalizes itself by taking on meaning in opposishytion to a preceding absence Thus the subject is a symbol that has only its own existence and discourse for support in reference to nothing apparent (Sem II p 350) From the start oflife the binary symbol does however link the Symbolic order to something Real identification with a present or absent object Such identification creates the desire to bring forth a presence or to expel it (Ausstossung or Bejahung) But such choiCes are not based on any innate knowlshyedge or even any moral capacity to distinguish good from bad Lacan said that the subject does not foment this game but takes its place there playing the role which creates it as a set of probable reshysults (Scm II p 227) Froln this perspective perception first exists as an Imaginary geometrical optic because it intersects with Desire The metonoolyOf Deslmiddotre which Lacan depifted in AJakobson ($shy~ a) has already begun to be conditionedbyen-an Imaginary circle

offantasy (SI- -+ S2) (Sem XX p 21) Later S2 will act as a semanshytic retroaction on the signifier for language (S]) (J-A Miller Another Lacan p 3)

In 1966 Lacan described unconscious numbers as intershymediary points between language and reality As countable unities or algorithms (1 2 3 etc)natural numbers or integers can be deshyfined as anything complete in itself or whole (Struc Con p 190) In 1975 Lacan said that language can be compared to mathemes insofar as both are structures (orders or unities) that transmit themshyselves integrally or as composed of constituent parts making a whole (Scm XX p 100) Although Hume tried to prove that countshying is an empirical fact Lacan stressed that Frege had disproved him by making it clear that every integer is in itself a unit (n + 1) A unit paradoxically is complete in itself because it infers a before and after It is this question of the one more that is the key to the genesis of numbers (Struc Con p 191) In other words nothing contains everything

When Lacan applied Freges concept of number to the logic of the signifier in the constitution of the human subject he stressed that Man is engaged by his whole being in the procession of numbers

differs from Imaginary representations Linguists who claim that cardinal numbers (I 2 3) appeared before ordinal ones (fil~st second third) lend support to Lacans application of Freges successhysor concept to the constitution ofmentality (Scm I I p 354) The unshy

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 2: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

II

Counting From Oto 6 The Lacanian Imaginary Order

ELLIE RAGLAND-SULLIVAN

Lacan sta~~d that the three dimensions of unconscious space are mathematical instead of intuitive (1 Kant) Moreover the unshyconscious can count up to 6 and not beyond 1 My interpretation of Lacans theory requires a clarification of what I understand by the Imaginary order not only because the Imaginary fogs up the tershyrain between conscious and unconscious realms but also because Lacan used Symbolic-order models when referring to unconscious coullting numher-settheory Fregean mathematics knot theory and so on Yet UllcollsdollS numbers are descriptive of realities conshy(erning the human su~ject who is only rePT(~sented in the Symbolic order while being excluded from that order2 Moreover a sul~jecls conscious self knowledge (formaiwma) is merely supposed

rhe link between Symbolic pre-suppositions and unconscious knowledge (savoir) is what I have called an Imaginary text Such a

text tries to wed the being of language to the non-being of objects through conscious meanings (significations) which infer their own asymmetrical double meaning (sens) in the unconscious If the human subject is only re-presented in the Symbolic order of conshyscious life but finds its Real re~fents in the unconscious then the mediate Imaginary text cannot e dismissed Indeed I find evidence in the Imaginary excluded ml die of normative tendencies by which individuals reify narcissism and seek to realize Desire the propensity to identify with images with a species with a name with a sexual gender myth with others in bonding-type relations with ones own children with a family line and finally with some transshycendental principle such as God Lacan taught that such a tr~ectory obfuscates unconscious truth however through the denials of language and the misrecognition of the roots of identity Lacan thus criticized those analysts and ego psychologists who reify the I maginary at the expense of knowledge of the unconscious By norshylIIalizing SYIIIPIOiIlS Ihey equal love mlttlTiage and parclliing as

impersonal categories of psychic health thus mistaking the Imagishynary circle of fantasy for the unconscious Desire w hkh has already made the Imaginary dissymmetrical 3

Unconscious spacemiddot as conceived by Lacan is not innate (cf Kant) but is created by the effects of the outer world I shall argue that Lacans six numbers mark the Real impact on humans of a neurological and physiological prematuration at birth followed by compensatory perceptu~l mergers and subsequent psychic separashytion In The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number Ernst Cassirer wrote The number is inherent in perception as are space and time Everything that exists in space lime also exists in numbermiddot I hope to show instead that the number is inferred the manner in which perception is structured from which its unconshyscious limitations are derived Thus seen number would not arise as natural representation of the body or denote asymmetry 01 harshymony between mother and child Nor would it be a representation of the stars or a link between biological realities and emotion Number would point rather to a dissymmetry in human knowlshyedge by which Lacan reinterpreted Freges paradox Even though the unconscious subject is produced and unified by language unshyconscious letters do not directly condition the relative order of spoken discourse6

In my view the six numbers would denote mirror-stage and Oedipal structures They are referents around which societies orshyganize themselves moving individuals along a blind signifying chain where they represent themselves to one another as objects of love or Desire As representative signifiers human subjects are tethered to the object (alA) then and not to a specific totalized identity7 Unconscious numbers become f((inctional operators of the Imaginary signifier for identity which p(~tiol1s the su~ject as an object in conscious life object of its own unconscious constitution In 1966 Lacan said that just as language is constituted by a set of fishynite signifiers- ba ta pa etc - probably the process of integers is only a special case of this relation between signifiers the collection ofwhich constitutes the Other (A)8 That is meaning is made by opshypositions be it verbal or numerical This brings us to Lacans applishycation of Freges discovery to the constitution of human mentality Frege uncovered a paradox the fact that every natural number has something before it and something after it This contradiction stopped him from counting beyond 011 a recursive function being implicit in his axiom

Frege postulated that the 0 the number and the successor function in constituting the series of natural numbers (Miller Sushyture p 27) When applied to a logic of the signifier Freges

middot

philosophical mathematics show the conscious subject being proshyduced as effect rather than already there as cause In its functionshying both anticipation and retroaction are always in play In his essay on Suture Jacques-Alain Miller defines suture as miscognition based on repression or the general relation of lack to the structure of which lack is an element (p 26) Identity is structured as a set of mathematical units and is not to be confused with personality thought of as a unified or fixed singularity or enduring substance9

Miller explains that 0 is ssigned to the concept which is not identical with itself to the concept as the extension of itself n + 1 0 renders lack visible and grounds truth which lies in the identical that is where the subject is a structure of repetition (pp 30-31) For someshything to be re-peated in conscious life it must have already been stated elsewhere This proposition sutures logical discourse (pp 29shy30) Thus a logic Of the signifier orders both human identity and relations And suture designates the relation between the Real and the Symbolic naming the relation of the subject to the chain of its discourse (p 25)

I w()uld describe miscognition as the basis of an I magi nary text a spreading of the suture effect across a persons life story The source of such effect lies in the Real of the signifiers in the unconshyscious which Lacan once called the caput mortuum ofthe autonomous signifier caput mortuum being an alchemical term for the residuum after distillation 1() This residue provides a doubling effect doublure meaning a kind oflining or understudy within the conscious subject Along these same lines Lacan said any dr~ourse of a subject is imshypure (Sem II p 352) We remembe~hat Lacan rejected the phenomenological idea that pure perception could exist in the Real and relocated it between the Real and the Symbolic Moreover pershyception was equated with a structured Imaginary which lives out the unconscious - albeit unawares - through fantasies equatable with reality In this sense the Imaginary becomes the others knowledge (S2) in relation to which a subject gives linguistic substantivity to the moi to representations and to the dead messages in the Other (A)

Lacan depicted the Imaginary function in adult life as mediatshying relations through the narcissistic captivation of the moi in idenshytificatory fusions Psychic development occurs in reference to others - transference - and not by means of impersonal developmental or biological mechanisms If unconscious numbers mark diachronic spaces in conscious life which denote the evolution ofidentificatory (Imaginary) relations - through varied Symbolic interpretations shytheoretical impasses in Lacan will become clearer impasses such as the hypothesis that the system oflanguage itself closes out truthful unconscious knowledge and that the substitmive o~jects of Desire

~

conceal the character of their true functioll to fill up lack hy creshyating a closure which resembles fullness I f indeed the Symbolic has defined a subject even before his birth then from its genesis subshyjectivity does not exist in a direct rapport to the Real Instead it exists in relation to a triumphant syntax which engenders a signifyshying mark (Ecrits 1966 p 50) That is the Symbolilt im poses its order on the Real Yet it is not homophonic or transparent signitiers which will reveal a link between the Symbolic and Real but the primitive symbolism which joins unconscious numbers in a strucshytured sequence that relates to a binary symbol

From a Kantian viewpoint the conscious subject would be the phenomenon (appearance) while the unconscious would contain das Ding an sich (the noumenon) or the Real subject 11 Kants subject leaves us suspended however between the Real and the phenoshymenal leaving out the Imaginary realm which connects the two But the Imaginary infuses ambiguity emotional content and Desire into concrete language Lacan said thus creating an inertia and conshyfusion in ordinary discourse (Sem II pp 351 353) When one realizes that the Imaginary thrust involves the mois efforts to verify its own ideal ego (as a unity) despite the obstacle of the Other (A) which always breaks up this moi propensity as well as the refusals of ego ideals (others) to lend permanent solidity tomoi fictions one sees why the Imaginary lends confusion But insofar as the Imagishynary is structured by repetition Igression and transference and is resistant to change then its mairrrer of functioning becomes an important focus for studying the effects of the unconscious on omshysclous life

Lacan said that the scope of the Symbolic within the umonshyscious is organized by successive unities which delimit the subject as a unity of meaning or as a meaningful unity (Sem II p 227) But this Symbolic interprets the Real thus structuring the Imaginary where perception and reality reside Here we can see the difference between a radical order of the Symbolic (as in mathematical symshybols) and that of the Imaginary which derives from the Real of natushyral symbols (the stin a tree and so on) If we take the first moment an infant perceives (sees or hears) as the start of a structuration of perception then we can make sense of Lacans notion that the bishynary symbol is essential to unconscious counting 0 represents an abshysence - a moment preceding repetition - but by its very notation imshyplies a presence 1 (Sem XX p 122) We are in the realm of paradox The game of the symbol presence or absence - organizes this something which calls itself asubject The issues of identity and mental causation become a mediation between a chain of symbols and the Real is it going to be this or that (Sem II p 226) Although

o is introduced to figure the numbers that will follow there is no rational reason for a 0 designation for a denotation of absence of numbers Even so the Phoenicians discovered 0 many centuries beshyfore Christ thus determining that counting not be random (trishybal)12 In 1964 Lacan said that 0 denotes the presence of the human subject which totalizes itself by taking on meaning in opposishytion to a preceding absence Thus the subject is a symbol that has only its own existence and discourse for support in reference to nothing apparent (Sem II p 350) From the start oflife the binary symbol does however link the Symbolic order to something Real identification with a present or absent object Such identification creates the desire to bring forth a presence or to expel it (Ausstossung or Bejahung) But such choiCes are not based on any innate knowlshyedge or even any moral capacity to distinguish good from bad Lacan said that the subject does not foment this game but takes its place there playing the role which creates it as a set of probable reshysults (Scm II p 227) Froln this perspective perception first exists as an Imaginary geometrical optic because it intersects with Desire The metonoolyOf Deslmiddotre which Lacan depifted in AJakobson ($shy~ a) has already begun to be conditionedbyen-an Imaginary circle

offantasy (SI- -+ S2) (Sem XX p 21) Later S2 will act as a semanshytic retroaction on the signifier for language (S]) (J-A Miller Another Lacan p 3)

In 1966 Lacan described unconscious numbers as intershymediary points between language and reality As countable unities or algorithms (1 2 3 etc)natural numbers or integers can be deshyfined as anything complete in itself or whole (Struc Con p 190) In 1975 Lacan said that language can be compared to mathemes insofar as both are structures (orders or unities) that transmit themshyselves integrally or as composed of constituent parts making a whole (Scm XX p 100) Although Hume tried to prove that countshying is an empirical fact Lacan stressed that Frege had disproved him by making it clear that every integer is in itself a unit (n + 1) A unit paradoxically is complete in itself because it infers a before and after It is this question of the one more that is the key to the genesis of numbers (Struc Con p 191) In other words nothing contains everything

When Lacan applied Freges concept of number to the logic of the signifier in the constitution of the human subject he stressed that Man is engaged by his whole being in the procession of numbers

differs from Imaginary representations Linguists who claim that cardinal numbers (I 2 3) appeared before ordinal ones (fil~st second third) lend support to Lacans application of Freges successhysor concept to the constitution ofmentality (Scm I I p 354) The unshy

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 3: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

impersonal categories of psychic health thus mistaking the Imagishynary circle of fantasy for the unconscious Desire w hkh has already made the Imaginary dissymmetrical 3

Unconscious spacemiddot as conceived by Lacan is not innate (cf Kant) but is created by the effects of the outer world I shall argue that Lacans six numbers mark the Real impact on humans of a neurological and physiological prematuration at birth followed by compensatory perceptu~l mergers and subsequent psychic separashytion In The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number Ernst Cassirer wrote The number is inherent in perception as are space and time Everything that exists in space lime also exists in numbermiddot I hope to show instead that the number is inferred the manner in which perception is structured from which its unconshyscious limitations are derived Thus seen number would not arise as natural representation of the body or denote asymmetry 01 harshymony between mother and child Nor would it be a representation of the stars or a link between biological realities and emotion Number would point rather to a dissymmetry in human knowlshyedge by which Lacan reinterpreted Freges paradox Even though the unconscious subject is produced and unified by language unshyconscious letters do not directly condition the relative order of spoken discourse6

In my view the six numbers would denote mirror-stage and Oedipal structures They are referents around which societies orshyganize themselves moving individuals along a blind signifying chain where they represent themselves to one another as objects of love or Desire As representative signifiers human subjects are tethered to the object (alA) then and not to a specific totalized identity7 Unconscious numbers become f((inctional operators of the Imaginary signifier for identity which p(~tiol1s the su~ject as an object in conscious life object of its own unconscious constitution In 1966 Lacan said that just as language is constituted by a set of fishynite signifiers- ba ta pa etc - probably the process of integers is only a special case of this relation between signifiers the collection ofwhich constitutes the Other (A)8 That is meaning is made by opshypositions be it verbal or numerical This brings us to Lacans applishycation of Freges discovery to the constitution of human mentality Frege uncovered a paradox the fact that every natural number has something before it and something after it This contradiction stopped him from counting beyond 011 a recursive function being implicit in his axiom

Frege postulated that the 0 the number and the successor function in constituting the series of natural numbers (Miller Sushyture p 27) When applied to a logic of the signifier Freges

middot

philosophical mathematics show the conscious subject being proshyduced as effect rather than already there as cause In its functionshying both anticipation and retroaction are always in play In his essay on Suture Jacques-Alain Miller defines suture as miscognition based on repression or the general relation of lack to the structure of which lack is an element (p 26) Identity is structured as a set of mathematical units and is not to be confused with personality thought of as a unified or fixed singularity or enduring substance9

Miller explains that 0 is ssigned to the concept which is not identical with itself to the concept as the extension of itself n + 1 0 renders lack visible and grounds truth which lies in the identical that is where the subject is a structure of repetition (pp 30-31) For someshything to be re-peated in conscious life it must have already been stated elsewhere This proposition sutures logical discourse (pp 29shy30) Thus a logic Of the signifier orders both human identity and relations And suture designates the relation between the Real and the Symbolic naming the relation of the subject to the chain of its discourse (p 25)

I w()uld describe miscognition as the basis of an I magi nary text a spreading of the suture effect across a persons life story The source of such effect lies in the Real of the signifiers in the unconshyscious which Lacan once called the caput mortuum ofthe autonomous signifier caput mortuum being an alchemical term for the residuum after distillation 1() This residue provides a doubling effect doublure meaning a kind oflining or understudy within the conscious subject Along these same lines Lacan said any dr~ourse of a subject is imshypure (Sem II p 352) We remembe~hat Lacan rejected the phenomenological idea that pure perception could exist in the Real and relocated it between the Real and the Symbolic Moreover pershyception was equated with a structured Imaginary which lives out the unconscious - albeit unawares - through fantasies equatable with reality In this sense the Imaginary becomes the others knowledge (S2) in relation to which a subject gives linguistic substantivity to the moi to representations and to the dead messages in the Other (A)

Lacan depicted the Imaginary function in adult life as mediatshying relations through the narcissistic captivation of the moi in idenshytificatory fusions Psychic development occurs in reference to others - transference - and not by means of impersonal developmental or biological mechanisms If unconscious numbers mark diachronic spaces in conscious life which denote the evolution ofidentificatory (Imaginary) relations - through varied Symbolic interpretations shytheoretical impasses in Lacan will become clearer impasses such as the hypothesis that the system oflanguage itself closes out truthful unconscious knowledge and that the substitmive o~jects of Desire

~

conceal the character of their true functioll to fill up lack hy creshyating a closure which resembles fullness I f indeed the Symbolic has defined a subject even before his birth then from its genesis subshyjectivity does not exist in a direct rapport to the Real Instead it exists in relation to a triumphant syntax which engenders a signifyshying mark (Ecrits 1966 p 50) That is the Symbolilt im poses its order on the Real Yet it is not homophonic or transparent signitiers which will reveal a link between the Symbolic and Real but the primitive symbolism which joins unconscious numbers in a strucshytured sequence that relates to a binary symbol

From a Kantian viewpoint the conscious subject would be the phenomenon (appearance) while the unconscious would contain das Ding an sich (the noumenon) or the Real subject 11 Kants subject leaves us suspended however between the Real and the phenoshymenal leaving out the Imaginary realm which connects the two But the Imaginary infuses ambiguity emotional content and Desire into concrete language Lacan said thus creating an inertia and conshyfusion in ordinary discourse (Sem II pp 351 353) When one realizes that the Imaginary thrust involves the mois efforts to verify its own ideal ego (as a unity) despite the obstacle of the Other (A) which always breaks up this moi propensity as well as the refusals of ego ideals (others) to lend permanent solidity tomoi fictions one sees why the Imaginary lends confusion But insofar as the Imagishynary is structured by repetition Igression and transference and is resistant to change then its mairrrer of functioning becomes an important focus for studying the effects of the unconscious on omshysclous life

Lacan said that the scope of the Symbolic within the umonshyscious is organized by successive unities which delimit the subject as a unity of meaning or as a meaningful unity (Sem II p 227) But this Symbolic interprets the Real thus structuring the Imaginary where perception and reality reside Here we can see the difference between a radical order of the Symbolic (as in mathematical symshybols) and that of the Imaginary which derives from the Real of natushyral symbols (the stin a tree and so on) If we take the first moment an infant perceives (sees or hears) as the start of a structuration of perception then we can make sense of Lacans notion that the bishynary symbol is essential to unconscious counting 0 represents an abshysence - a moment preceding repetition - but by its very notation imshyplies a presence 1 (Sem XX p 122) We are in the realm of paradox The game of the symbol presence or absence - organizes this something which calls itself asubject The issues of identity and mental causation become a mediation between a chain of symbols and the Real is it going to be this or that (Sem II p 226) Although

o is introduced to figure the numbers that will follow there is no rational reason for a 0 designation for a denotation of absence of numbers Even so the Phoenicians discovered 0 many centuries beshyfore Christ thus determining that counting not be random (trishybal)12 In 1964 Lacan said that 0 denotes the presence of the human subject which totalizes itself by taking on meaning in opposishytion to a preceding absence Thus the subject is a symbol that has only its own existence and discourse for support in reference to nothing apparent (Sem II p 350) From the start oflife the binary symbol does however link the Symbolic order to something Real identification with a present or absent object Such identification creates the desire to bring forth a presence or to expel it (Ausstossung or Bejahung) But such choiCes are not based on any innate knowlshyedge or even any moral capacity to distinguish good from bad Lacan said that the subject does not foment this game but takes its place there playing the role which creates it as a set of probable reshysults (Scm II p 227) Froln this perspective perception first exists as an Imaginary geometrical optic because it intersects with Desire The metonoolyOf Deslmiddotre which Lacan depifted in AJakobson ($shy~ a) has already begun to be conditionedbyen-an Imaginary circle

offantasy (SI- -+ S2) (Sem XX p 21) Later S2 will act as a semanshytic retroaction on the signifier for language (S]) (J-A Miller Another Lacan p 3)

In 1966 Lacan described unconscious numbers as intershymediary points between language and reality As countable unities or algorithms (1 2 3 etc)natural numbers or integers can be deshyfined as anything complete in itself or whole (Struc Con p 190) In 1975 Lacan said that language can be compared to mathemes insofar as both are structures (orders or unities) that transmit themshyselves integrally or as composed of constituent parts making a whole (Scm XX p 100) Although Hume tried to prove that countshying is an empirical fact Lacan stressed that Frege had disproved him by making it clear that every integer is in itself a unit (n + 1) A unit paradoxically is complete in itself because it infers a before and after It is this question of the one more that is the key to the genesis of numbers (Struc Con p 191) In other words nothing contains everything

When Lacan applied Freges concept of number to the logic of the signifier in the constitution of the human subject he stressed that Man is engaged by his whole being in the procession of numbers

differs from Imaginary representations Linguists who claim that cardinal numbers (I 2 3) appeared before ordinal ones (fil~st second third) lend support to Lacans application of Freges successhysor concept to the constitution ofmentality (Scm I I p 354) The unshy

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 4: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

middot

philosophical mathematics show the conscious subject being proshyduced as effect rather than already there as cause In its functionshying both anticipation and retroaction are always in play In his essay on Suture Jacques-Alain Miller defines suture as miscognition based on repression or the general relation of lack to the structure of which lack is an element (p 26) Identity is structured as a set of mathematical units and is not to be confused with personality thought of as a unified or fixed singularity or enduring substance9

Miller explains that 0 is ssigned to the concept which is not identical with itself to the concept as the extension of itself n + 1 0 renders lack visible and grounds truth which lies in the identical that is where the subject is a structure of repetition (pp 30-31) For someshything to be re-peated in conscious life it must have already been stated elsewhere This proposition sutures logical discourse (pp 29shy30) Thus a logic Of the signifier orders both human identity and relations And suture designates the relation between the Real and the Symbolic naming the relation of the subject to the chain of its discourse (p 25)

I w()uld describe miscognition as the basis of an I magi nary text a spreading of the suture effect across a persons life story The source of such effect lies in the Real of the signifiers in the unconshyscious which Lacan once called the caput mortuum ofthe autonomous signifier caput mortuum being an alchemical term for the residuum after distillation 1() This residue provides a doubling effect doublure meaning a kind oflining or understudy within the conscious subject Along these same lines Lacan said any dr~ourse of a subject is imshypure (Sem II p 352) We remembe~hat Lacan rejected the phenomenological idea that pure perception could exist in the Real and relocated it between the Real and the Symbolic Moreover pershyception was equated with a structured Imaginary which lives out the unconscious - albeit unawares - through fantasies equatable with reality In this sense the Imaginary becomes the others knowledge (S2) in relation to which a subject gives linguistic substantivity to the moi to representations and to the dead messages in the Other (A)

Lacan depicted the Imaginary function in adult life as mediatshying relations through the narcissistic captivation of the moi in idenshytificatory fusions Psychic development occurs in reference to others - transference - and not by means of impersonal developmental or biological mechanisms If unconscious numbers mark diachronic spaces in conscious life which denote the evolution ofidentificatory (Imaginary) relations - through varied Symbolic interpretations shytheoretical impasses in Lacan will become clearer impasses such as the hypothesis that the system oflanguage itself closes out truthful unconscious knowledge and that the substitmive o~jects of Desire

~

conceal the character of their true functioll to fill up lack hy creshyating a closure which resembles fullness I f indeed the Symbolic has defined a subject even before his birth then from its genesis subshyjectivity does not exist in a direct rapport to the Real Instead it exists in relation to a triumphant syntax which engenders a signifyshying mark (Ecrits 1966 p 50) That is the Symbolilt im poses its order on the Real Yet it is not homophonic or transparent signitiers which will reveal a link between the Symbolic and Real but the primitive symbolism which joins unconscious numbers in a strucshytured sequence that relates to a binary symbol

From a Kantian viewpoint the conscious subject would be the phenomenon (appearance) while the unconscious would contain das Ding an sich (the noumenon) or the Real subject 11 Kants subject leaves us suspended however between the Real and the phenoshymenal leaving out the Imaginary realm which connects the two But the Imaginary infuses ambiguity emotional content and Desire into concrete language Lacan said thus creating an inertia and conshyfusion in ordinary discourse (Sem II pp 351 353) When one realizes that the Imaginary thrust involves the mois efforts to verify its own ideal ego (as a unity) despite the obstacle of the Other (A) which always breaks up this moi propensity as well as the refusals of ego ideals (others) to lend permanent solidity tomoi fictions one sees why the Imaginary lends confusion But insofar as the Imagishynary is structured by repetition Igression and transference and is resistant to change then its mairrrer of functioning becomes an important focus for studying the effects of the unconscious on omshysclous life

Lacan said that the scope of the Symbolic within the umonshyscious is organized by successive unities which delimit the subject as a unity of meaning or as a meaningful unity (Sem II p 227) But this Symbolic interprets the Real thus structuring the Imaginary where perception and reality reside Here we can see the difference between a radical order of the Symbolic (as in mathematical symshybols) and that of the Imaginary which derives from the Real of natushyral symbols (the stin a tree and so on) If we take the first moment an infant perceives (sees or hears) as the start of a structuration of perception then we can make sense of Lacans notion that the bishynary symbol is essential to unconscious counting 0 represents an abshysence - a moment preceding repetition - but by its very notation imshyplies a presence 1 (Sem XX p 122) We are in the realm of paradox The game of the symbol presence or absence - organizes this something which calls itself asubject The issues of identity and mental causation become a mediation between a chain of symbols and the Real is it going to be this or that (Sem II p 226) Although

o is introduced to figure the numbers that will follow there is no rational reason for a 0 designation for a denotation of absence of numbers Even so the Phoenicians discovered 0 many centuries beshyfore Christ thus determining that counting not be random (trishybal)12 In 1964 Lacan said that 0 denotes the presence of the human subject which totalizes itself by taking on meaning in opposishytion to a preceding absence Thus the subject is a symbol that has only its own existence and discourse for support in reference to nothing apparent (Sem II p 350) From the start oflife the binary symbol does however link the Symbolic order to something Real identification with a present or absent object Such identification creates the desire to bring forth a presence or to expel it (Ausstossung or Bejahung) But such choiCes are not based on any innate knowlshyedge or even any moral capacity to distinguish good from bad Lacan said that the subject does not foment this game but takes its place there playing the role which creates it as a set of probable reshysults (Scm II p 227) Froln this perspective perception first exists as an Imaginary geometrical optic because it intersects with Desire The metonoolyOf Deslmiddotre which Lacan depifted in AJakobson ($shy~ a) has already begun to be conditionedbyen-an Imaginary circle

offantasy (SI- -+ S2) (Sem XX p 21) Later S2 will act as a semanshytic retroaction on the signifier for language (S]) (J-A Miller Another Lacan p 3)

In 1966 Lacan described unconscious numbers as intershymediary points between language and reality As countable unities or algorithms (1 2 3 etc)natural numbers or integers can be deshyfined as anything complete in itself or whole (Struc Con p 190) In 1975 Lacan said that language can be compared to mathemes insofar as both are structures (orders or unities) that transmit themshyselves integrally or as composed of constituent parts making a whole (Scm XX p 100) Although Hume tried to prove that countshying is an empirical fact Lacan stressed that Frege had disproved him by making it clear that every integer is in itself a unit (n + 1) A unit paradoxically is complete in itself because it infers a before and after It is this question of the one more that is the key to the genesis of numbers (Struc Con p 191) In other words nothing contains everything

When Lacan applied Freges concept of number to the logic of the signifier in the constitution of the human subject he stressed that Man is engaged by his whole being in the procession of numbers

differs from Imaginary representations Linguists who claim that cardinal numbers (I 2 3) appeared before ordinal ones (fil~st second third) lend support to Lacans application of Freges successhysor concept to the constitution ofmentality (Scm I I p 354) The unshy

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 5: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

conceal the character of their true functioll to fill up lack hy creshyating a closure which resembles fullness I f indeed the Symbolic has defined a subject even before his birth then from its genesis subshyjectivity does not exist in a direct rapport to the Real Instead it exists in relation to a triumphant syntax which engenders a signifyshying mark (Ecrits 1966 p 50) That is the Symbolilt im poses its order on the Real Yet it is not homophonic or transparent signitiers which will reveal a link between the Symbolic and Real but the primitive symbolism which joins unconscious numbers in a strucshytured sequence that relates to a binary symbol

From a Kantian viewpoint the conscious subject would be the phenomenon (appearance) while the unconscious would contain das Ding an sich (the noumenon) or the Real subject 11 Kants subject leaves us suspended however between the Real and the phenoshymenal leaving out the Imaginary realm which connects the two But the Imaginary infuses ambiguity emotional content and Desire into concrete language Lacan said thus creating an inertia and conshyfusion in ordinary discourse (Sem II pp 351 353) When one realizes that the Imaginary thrust involves the mois efforts to verify its own ideal ego (as a unity) despite the obstacle of the Other (A) which always breaks up this moi propensity as well as the refusals of ego ideals (others) to lend permanent solidity tomoi fictions one sees why the Imaginary lends confusion But insofar as the Imagishynary is structured by repetition Igression and transference and is resistant to change then its mairrrer of functioning becomes an important focus for studying the effects of the unconscious on omshysclous life

Lacan said that the scope of the Symbolic within the umonshyscious is organized by successive unities which delimit the subject as a unity of meaning or as a meaningful unity (Sem II p 227) But this Symbolic interprets the Real thus structuring the Imaginary where perception and reality reside Here we can see the difference between a radical order of the Symbolic (as in mathematical symshybols) and that of the Imaginary which derives from the Real of natushyral symbols (the stin a tree and so on) If we take the first moment an infant perceives (sees or hears) as the start of a structuration of perception then we can make sense of Lacans notion that the bishynary symbol is essential to unconscious counting 0 represents an abshysence - a moment preceding repetition - but by its very notation imshyplies a presence 1 (Sem XX p 122) We are in the realm of paradox The game of the symbol presence or absence - organizes this something which calls itself asubject The issues of identity and mental causation become a mediation between a chain of symbols and the Real is it going to be this or that (Sem II p 226) Although

o is introduced to figure the numbers that will follow there is no rational reason for a 0 designation for a denotation of absence of numbers Even so the Phoenicians discovered 0 many centuries beshyfore Christ thus determining that counting not be random (trishybal)12 In 1964 Lacan said that 0 denotes the presence of the human subject which totalizes itself by taking on meaning in opposishytion to a preceding absence Thus the subject is a symbol that has only its own existence and discourse for support in reference to nothing apparent (Sem II p 350) From the start oflife the binary symbol does however link the Symbolic order to something Real identification with a present or absent object Such identification creates the desire to bring forth a presence or to expel it (Ausstossung or Bejahung) But such choiCes are not based on any innate knowlshyedge or even any moral capacity to distinguish good from bad Lacan said that the subject does not foment this game but takes its place there playing the role which creates it as a set of probable reshysults (Scm II p 227) Froln this perspective perception first exists as an Imaginary geometrical optic because it intersects with Desire The metonoolyOf Deslmiddotre which Lacan depifted in AJakobson ($shy~ a) has already begun to be conditionedbyen-an Imaginary circle

offantasy (SI- -+ S2) (Sem XX p 21) Later S2 will act as a semanshytic retroaction on the signifier for language (S]) (J-A Miller Another Lacan p 3)

In 1966 Lacan described unconscious numbers as intershymediary points between language and reality As countable unities or algorithms (1 2 3 etc)natural numbers or integers can be deshyfined as anything complete in itself or whole (Struc Con p 190) In 1975 Lacan said that language can be compared to mathemes insofar as both are structures (orders or unities) that transmit themshyselves integrally or as composed of constituent parts making a whole (Scm XX p 100) Although Hume tried to prove that countshying is an empirical fact Lacan stressed that Frege had disproved him by making it clear that every integer is in itself a unit (n + 1) A unit paradoxically is complete in itself because it infers a before and after It is this question of the one more that is the key to the genesis of numbers (Struc Con p 191) In other words nothing contains everything

When Lacan applied Freges concept of number to the logic of the signifier in the constitution of the human subject he stressed that Man is engaged by his whole being in the procession of numbers

differs from Imaginary representations Linguists who claim that cardinal numbers (I 2 3) appeared before ordinal ones (fil~st second third) lend support to Lacans application of Freges successhysor concept to the constitution ofmentality (Scm I I p 354) The unshy

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 6: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

o is introduced to figure the numbers that will follow there is no rational reason for a 0 designation for a denotation of absence of numbers Even so the Phoenicians discovered 0 many centuries beshyfore Christ thus determining that counting not be random (trishybal)12 In 1964 Lacan said that 0 denotes the presence of the human subject which totalizes itself by taking on meaning in opposishytion to a preceding absence Thus the subject is a symbol that has only its own existence and discourse for support in reference to nothing apparent (Sem II p 350) From the start oflife the binary symbol does however link the Symbolic order to something Real identification with a present or absent object Such identification creates the desire to bring forth a presence or to expel it (Ausstossung or Bejahung) But such choiCes are not based on any innate knowlshyedge or even any moral capacity to distinguish good from bad Lacan said that the subject does not foment this game but takes its place there playing the role which creates it as a set of probable reshysults (Scm II p 227) Froln this perspective perception first exists as an Imaginary geometrical optic because it intersects with Desire The metonoolyOf Deslmiddotre which Lacan depifted in AJakobson ($shy~ a) has already begun to be conditionedbyen-an Imaginary circle

offantasy (SI- -+ S2) (Sem XX p 21) Later S2 will act as a semanshytic retroaction on the signifier for language (S]) (J-A Miller Another Lacan p 3)

In 1966 Lacan described unconscious numbers as intershymediary points between language and reality As countable unities or algorithms (1 2 3 etc)natural numbers or integers can be deshyfined as anything complete in itself or whole (Struc Con p 190) In 1975 Lacan said that language can be compared to mathemes insofar as both are structures (orders or unities) that transmit themshyselves integrally or as composed of constituent parts making a whole (Scm XX p 100) Although Hume tried to prove that countshying is an empirical fact Lacan stressed that Frege had disproved him by making it clear that every integer is in itself a unit (n + 1) A unit paradoxically is complete in itself because it infers a before and after It is this question of the one more that is the key to the genesis of numbers (Struc Con p 191) In other words nothing contains everything

When Lacan applied Freges concept of number to the logic of the signifier in the constitution of the human subject he stressed that Man is engaged by his whole being in the procession of numbers

differs from Imaginary representations Linguists who claim that cardinal numbers (I 2 3) appeared before ordinal ones (fil~st second third) lend support to Lacans application of Freges successhysor concept to the constitution ofmentality (Scm I I p 354) The unshy

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 7: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

conscious impinges on language - not because it is an assemblage ofwords hul- because il is precisely structured (Slru( (0 p IH7) In 1966 Lacan said that by structure he meant as a language that is meaning is made by opposition as well as by combination substitution and referentiality (the law of signifier extended by the laws of metaphor and metonymy) What has already been detershymined is the 1 of the mirror-stage illusion o(constancy the 2 of dissymmetry or division into conscious and repressed parts and the 3 of alternance or difference Two denotes the subject who exists only by repeating the one of a primordial sense of coherence to which two gives a name In 1955 Lacan had said that it is amazing that Man integrates himself to something which already reigns by its combinations even if that something is repressed (Sim np 354) Yet as a subject extends itself in time it recognizes its own logic in the automatism of repetitions (recognizes itself as a Real regularshyity) beyond the pleasure principle

In 1975 Lacan said t~ laJangue or the ecrits are mathematical things (Sim XX p 108) Mlthematical means that something has structure (order) and something tharhas structure possesses meanshyingIndeed one might say that from the moment the first symbol is introjected it is automatically given meaning by opposing itself to absence (no meaning) this symbolbecomes a presence (a meanshying) which can then be repeated in the sense of being re-cognized From this perspective we could infer an elemental structure in the primordial pre-discursive period prior to speech We would then not have to fall back on a hazy object-relations symbolism or an inshyexplicable moralism to explain the origins of representationalism as many have done This primordial order would be characterized by repetition and transformation Charles Melman has suggested that perhaps the genesis of One would be a unity whose counting

begins with the lost object (in this case the death ofthe Rat Mans flther)13 In another context let us emphasize that as soon as the natural symbol is recorded as a mental phenomenon this symbol no longer exists as a pure or Real object It has been transformed into a unifying lining of the subject to which all representations gradushy

refer Butdeterminative laws in mental causality are those of the Symshy

bolic Anterior to any declaration of chance these laws differ from those of the hard sciences where both chance and determinism manshyifest an absence of precise meaning as well as of intentionality Lacans subject is formed as an intentional structure ordered by the meanings given to the experiences of mirror-stage desire for oneshyness - ie constancy or homeostasis - and the Oedipal injunction to differentiation As language is acquired mirror-stage fixations

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 8: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

are linked up to moi fictions both ofwhich are elaborated by the dyshynamic repressions which the Other infuses into conscious knowlshyedge Lacans determined subject is clearly not the Freudian ego whose stages are thought to mature in relation to instinctual impershysonal id drives Although the Lacanian subject is of course afshyfected by oral and anal stages these are developed within the lanshyguage-specific context of a pre-mirror stage fusion a mirror-stage duality and the ternary effects of Oedipal division Thus the Real events which occur in the first three years of life are always symshybolized mentally in reference to objects images words and the imshypact ofeffect

If Lacans unconscious numbers mark the Real effects and traumas occasioned by identificatory fusions and Oedipal separashytion then 0 to 3 would denote topological fixations (analysis situs) of which the myths and language of persons and cultures would be inshyterpretations The subject would evolve during its first five years as an ellipse like the geometrical curve which moves obliquely to its axis not touching the base But the sum of its distances from fixed points (foci) would be co~ because mirror-stage and Oedipal structures are recorded for all time even though their meanings vary throughout life We know that Lacan located words and images in the unconscious and found meaning within their liaisons meanshying which is nonetheless opaque to conscious life We also know that by placing primary representations in a primordial unconshyscious and secondary ones between consciousness and perception Lacan created a bridge between a conscious sense of unconscious knowledge and its actual truth While secondary representations refer to specific meanings perhaps primary representations fall on the side of the numerical structuration which Lacan placed in the intersuqjective field of the Other and described as opening onto the plane ofconscious language as a kind ofprimitive symbolism

In Seminar One Lacan described the intersubjective relation as Imaginary based on the processes commanded by structures in the unconscious Pointing out that the dual interplay of gazes in the mirror stage follows Real rules as in a game he directed attention to a paradox game theory exists on a Symbolic plane and is not an Imaginary phenomenon 14 One could interpret this to mean that formalist (Symbolic) theories try to account for something Real which is ineffable If the Real can never be directly said we may best look for signs of unconscious counting in the gaps created by a conjunction of Real effects and Symbolic meanings For by infershyring metonymy as the structure of meaning Lacan turned the meaning of meaning debate on its head postulating true savoir in a topological unity of gaps 15 At these points ofjoin the moi acts as

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 9: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

an Imaginary su~ject animating the Symbolic subject the je They coalesceina conspiracy of silence to give paradoxical witness to

anUr-structure a localized unconscious knowledge II follows if ala neVlt pas de soi that there is no pure game of chance involved in the causation ofwhich a subject is the effect (Sem II p 226)

Insofar as an Imaginary text infuses unconscious meaning into conscious life the Imasinary itself stands as a privileged domain In that many Lacanian cuwnentators have taken the Imaginary to refer only to the alien imagos with which an infant initially idenshytifies they have reduced this order to the neurotic function of enshygaging adults in the closure of narcissistic relations Condemned to the limitations of neurosis or childlike fantasy the Imaginary is seen as a phase to be transcended on the road to psychic awareness and freedom My reading of Lacans texts lends far greater scope to the Imaginary By connecting the unconscious to conscious life through a variety of invisible joins the Imaginary places affective value on Symbolic order conventions and thereby infers amiddot heterogeneity into discourse As the purveyor of active albeit reshypressed representations and identificatory knowledge the Imagshyinary judges people and experiences intuitively in light of invisishyble resonances Like the moi the Imaginary also functions to blot out the unconscious knowledge to which its very existence gives silent witness Yet even though there is no direct way to analyze the unshyconscious in the Imaginary points ofjoin are ascertainable in repetishytions transference dynamic repressions and in reference to subshystitutiveDesire

The scope of the Imaginary would be much vaster than its surshyface features of mere ego limitations which idealize aggrandize and block off the unconscious Through a kind of evocative dispershysion of its own symbolicity into language the moi also transcends its limitations by projecting itself in a vacillating posture Moreover there isa link between the moi and unconscious representations a primordial join of language to image Lacancalled such a join the place of the primordial Other There one finds symbols redefined by Lacan as the base units of all knowledge Symbols reach all the way back to primordial images and to the localized signifiers Lacan called letters eIre of body and being Between o and eighteen months a primordial symbolization of the body predates any reshycording of perceptum at the level of representational awareness These symbols are translations of natural phenomena or prevashylent images a breast excrement a gaze (ocular image) the voice (auditory images) As an infants visual perception gradually widens it includes all its surroundings Natural symbols belong to the Real including such things as an elephant the distinctions beshy

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 10: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

tween light and dark and so on Money by contrast is a purely symshybolic substitute for the natural symbol of exchange And exchange is a phenomenon which not being easily quantified demands symshybolic proof

In the Other (A) one also finds the modus operandi by symbols first make meaning thus joining hands with the law of the signifier Since meaning is made by oppositions signifiers (or symbols) - the signifier already existing in the symbol- always come in pairs (1 +) Lacan said that a kind of equivalence between sigshynifiers permits us to point to the problem of the realism of the number which deterllingts a subject as a value in the unconscious a plus or minus (Sem xrp 227) The unconscious subject has no inshyherent being only a negative or positive value in relation to its own constitution as an effect of mirror-stage identification and Oedipal division If a subject is anchored thus then the Imaginary fictions which interpret the uncon~cious resemble all knowledge and lanshyguage in having the structure of metaphor That is they substitute or double for something else the metonymy which makes them possible

J-A Miller wrote that a unity of the subject holds only insofar as the number functions to represent its name that is insofar as the su~ject is assimihtble to repetition (Suture p 29) Stressing the mathematical logic in play Miller wrote elsewhere that the formula SI- ~ S2 does not mean that the subject can find a specific idenshytity in the signifier an absolute representation his own true name The Other of the signifier provides no name for the subject of the unconscious (Another Lacan p 3) A propos Lacan once wrote A certificate tells me that I was born I repudiate that certificate For I am not a poet but a poem A poem that is being written even if it looks like a subject 16

The unconscious of the subject is the subject of the unconshyscious But even prior to the formation of an unconscious in and by language a primitive structuration lies behind the words which will later govern thought and action making of thought a secondary and unnatural producLFrom a Lacanian perspective thought is seen as a complex of relations which negotiate Desire rather than static consciousness of something And such ideas can not be equated with Idealist philosophy or Gnosticism because Laqm showed a Real correlation between the structure of identity and the logic by which a subject is structured in the first place By placing Freuds Vorstellungsrapresentanz between perception and consciousshyness Lacan proposed a link between Freudian Wahrnehmungszeichen (perception marks) and language Insofar as Vorstellungsrapresentanz is portrayed as actively representing representations they become

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 11: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

the means by which unconscious structure is dynamically imposed on conscious life Metonymically joined to the Other (A) such repshyresentations thwart the Imaginarylmoi propensities to seek dosure They also evoke the more than language which dwells within lanshyguage When linked to a semantics of unconscious numbers dyshynamic representationalism is the means by which Illaginary mateshyrial is carried along a probability curve that makes sense of repetishytion and Desire as the automatic organizing principles in identificashytory relations and within social institutions

To date one of the most interesting accounts of Lacans theory of unconscious counting has appeared in Jacques Lawn The Drath ofan Intellectual Hero by Stuart Schneiderman 17 Using number set theory Schneiderman seeks to explain the idea that the combinashytory power of number association orders the ambiguities of the unshyconscious IS In number set theory ordinal numbers- ie numbers in a series expressing order or succession - give rise to each other Moreover a print beyond zero is postulated the nul set designated as Y (zero barred) The nul set is a modern invention a kind ofshortshyhand for the idea that something precedes and grounds each natushyral number In other wordsalthough each number is in itself comshyplete each set contains all the elements of the previous set A nul set thus grounds the next number which denotes the absence of number the O This 0 is in turn bracketed - [0] - to distinguish it from the nul set The next number will be the first countable number either 1 or 0 bracketed twice Set theory continues by a series ofeverexpanding bracketed zeroes (The Death pp 4-5)

Schneiderman describes the nul set as the empty grave This set is important not because of its relationship to death but because it symbolizes the place against which we have to confront the dead The problem Schneiderman continues is that the empty grave is a]so a subject the nul set implies a mark or a bracketed zero The mark like the unconscious symbol presupposes a before In conseshyquence the human subject is always split between a mark and a void One becomes both the signifying mark ofcountability -the singular subject - and also the number of unification or binding Two is the numerical prototype ofall the dualisms spawned by the intersubjecshytive relation the ego and its object you and me mother and inner and outer Three refers to the Oedipal structure which exshytends childhood into adult life in terms of a persons early relationshyship to the mother and father 3 also symbolizes the Imaginary Symbolic and Real as well as the three intersections in the Borroshymean knot

But 4 is the trickiest writes Schneiderman Four comes into play in the schema for intersubjectivity where one moves from

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 12: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

Other to moi and to je from je to other and from other to moi Lacan also taught in Seminar Twenty that discourse was formed by the movement of foUl fundamental terms (S S2 S a) (p 8) I would add as well Lacans four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis the unconscious repetition transference and drive (Desire) and the four key signifiers in the unconscious (birth procreation love and death) Schneiderman also sees 4 as marking the place of the symptom That is the telling of ones story is the unfolding ofthe subjects quadrature A symptom appears when the first three numbers do not hold together when a disturbance in Oedipal relashytions is brought into play To my knowledge Lacan did not analyze numbers 5 and 6 although he did say in 1966 that after fifteen years he had taught his students to count up to 5 which is difficult 4 being easier (Stru Con p 190) In light ofset theory Schneidershyman has said that an analysis of numbers 5 and 6 would be so comshyplex as to require the use of mathematical symbols

Although Schneidermans discussion is an excellent Symbolic order portrayal of the differentially calculable effects of the Lacanshyian unconscious I would suggest another theory of unconscious counting In set theory each set contains everything from the previshyous set (a predecessor relation) But Freges successor relation is a minimal logic in that within it are given those pieces only which are necessary to assure it a progression reduced to a linear movement

Suture p 25) Prior to linguistic syntax an identificatory semantics su~jectivizes the representation of reality by rooting hunmn perception in a network of imagistic and phonetic material recorded as mental phenomena The earliest perception of infants is submerged in a meaning system where certain images are constishytuted for the instincts themselves The first recorded objects are the oral and excremental ones to which Lacan added the gazeand the voice These elemental images constitute the originary matrices to which all other images will later become attached in hallucinashytory representational chains Language will later try to make sense of this irretrievable period of chaos and boundarilessness Words will seek to make the primordial Real Imaginary by humanizing it

Lacan once described early corporeal images as belonging to an unsymbolized Imaginary Since the infants perception is uncomshyprehending early introjects resist symbolization Still this material is not lost It forms the beginnings of the symbolization of unconshyscious Desire and the kernel of a moi Still the welter of disasshysociated relations introjected by the premature neonate is so fragshymented and confusing that Lacan once located the source of the neath drive in the first six months of human life Elsewhere he deshy

this period as one of primordial misery But alongside the

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 13: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

delay in motor development there is a human precociousness in the maturation of visual perception The eye thus plays a crucial role in the functional anticipation of the development of mentalityHl The first structuring of perception is Imaginary the subject being a composite of the introjected images of culture Not surprisingly Lacan taught that perception precedes impressionsand excites the nervous system not the reverse (Slim II p 173) While Freud vacilshylated for years about where to locate the perceptual-consdousness system Lacan placed perception on the side ofthe unconscious and located the perception-unconscious system within the Imaginary order

Lacan once said that the Imaginary does not appear as a unified perceptual order until adult life One can nonetheless see this order being woven together as a way to symbolize perception from the start of life Within such a framework 0 would represent an Imaginary conjunction of presence and absence (Symbolic and Real) at a point 0 of Desire wherehuman need is subjected to condishytioning by the symbol and by effect Between 0 and six months of age an infant identifies with primary objects making 0 the number connoting elemental fantasies At this point 0 infers the lack of nonshydifferentiated awareness Just as this lack is a function of neurologishycal and physiological insufficiency its unconscious feature has to do with its irrecuperability Perceptual fusions with body parts and imagistic fragments create primordial unities or letters of the body This experience ensures that human beings will not be able to perceive their bodies in a complete fashion in later life (Sht~ I p 200) The Imaginary 0 would refer then to the pre-mirrorstage infant who experiences the world in bits and pieces and f~lils to difshyferentiate such experience from its self This idea would make sense of the fact that infants later discover their own fingers and toes as part ofan originally unsuspected body unity

The subjectivization of the subject begins with fantasies of the Real (Sem XI p 41) The Imaginary 0 thusdenotesan irrecuperashyble and unnameable primordial memory bank ofbeing The subject is lined by maternal signifieds which are repressed as the prototypes of objects of Desire We might go so far as to suggest that primaryshyprocess laws are not innate but are themselves an effect of the conshydensations and displacements which create a metaphorical moi whose poin t of reference is the metonymy ofOtherness 0 gives over to an Imaginary 1 when the infant attains a sense of body unity by mentally identifying with a Gestalt exterior to itself between six and eighteen months of age20 From a developmental point of view perhaps an infant passes from a pre-mirror to a mirror stage heshycause its motor control has increased The infant has learned to sit

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 14: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

up and hold up its head One would be the number of symbiosis denoting the assumption of a unified form and the psychic confushysion of being and body integrity The infant learns to identify its own body as a reflection derived from a mirror and from the knowlshyedge that he is someone in the eyes of others One is therefore number representing the joyful awareness of havingbeing a self I n the spirit of a pre-Castration jou~5sance the infant laughs at its self in the mirror or at the sight of its mothers face Laughter atshytests to repetition as re-cognition The pleasure is a pleasure of familiarity of a mastery providing some cohesion to an originary void in comprehension

One is also the number of sorrow for the identificatory illusion of being a totality is false This illusion marks the impossibility oflivshying the life of the self as an other The young object is Lacan said abject Words such as alone and lonely attest to the fact that one does not always mean whole (The Interpretation ofLanguage p 328) The impossibility of an independently whole identity undershylies the distinction Lacan made between an ideal ego - the primorshydial rnoi and the ego ideals (others) in whose eyes people value themselves throughollllife Human conflict continually arises from the fusion in face of the reality of its repeated failure One then is the number of an intra-subjective split (fertle) and of interdepenshydency Thuamp I s paradoxical reality is dialectical tension over the momentary oases ofOneness

Imaginarily speaking 2 denotes the post-mirror phenomeshynon of an interampubjective splitting of the subject (Freuds lchspaltung and Lacans refente) This split is internalized as repression Some

term intervenes in order to teach the infant that it is other than the objects with which it has identified It seems likely that the mirshyror stage ends around this time because the infant able to walk is biologically ready to undertake lifes next great challenge to learn the language which has pervaded its ethos since birth The post-mirshyror stage child learns that it is not only a unified organism but also a nameable unity In 1966 Lacan said that 2 was important in Freuds concept of Eros because Eros is a unifying power (Struc Con p 200) It also makes sense to base Eros in a language domain

light of Lacans theory that language substitutes for the pain of mirror-stage separation by its symbolic power to eVQke an absent obshy

Freuds Fott Da model Thus 2 would denote the linguistic power of repetition and metaphor within an identificatory trltyecshytory Paradoxically 2 also points to the birth of the unconscious Other (A) whose meanings are metonymical Castration then is both an effect of which the subject is the dissymmetrical result and the means by which a primary repression of the symbol for separashy

13

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 15: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

tion - the phallic signifier - occurs This split elevates Desire to tht level ofdrive

In Seminar Two Lacan taught And it is not for nothing that I make you play the game ofodds or evens (p253) It is with symshybolism it is from this die which rolls that desire arises I do not say human desire because when all is said and done the man who plays with the die is captive of the desire thus put into play He does not know the origin of his desire rolling with the symbol written on the six sides (p 273) The Imaginary 2 becomes 3 along the chain of events that take place between eighteen months and five or six years of age During this period a grammar is acquired the brain lateralized an identity assumed and sexual difference learned The moi is solidified as a narcissistic structure from which differentiation can be modulated21 During childhood and adolescence 3 conshynotes the Oedipal gender myths which situate mother father and child in familial and cultural concepts ofmasculinity and femininity Like Freud Lacan found no gender distinction inscribed in the unshyconscious But unlike Freud Lacan suggested that gender myths were linguistic fictions that interpret the impacl of loss of the primordial mother at the fathers behest The Real impact of a prishymary splitting shatters the young childs sense of its own omniposhytence and psychic totality 3 is on the side ofThanatos that which reveals limitations caused by the injection of prohibition and law into symbiotic jouissance

Grammar rules are firmly grounded at approximately the same time a child begins to assimilate the fictions which describe its genshyder as a specific sexual identity thus linking language gender idenshytity Desire and Law in an unconscious intentional bond Whether or not a child identifies with the Phallus will determine his or her trajectory of love relations as well as psychic sym ptoms Ifmasculinshyity or femininity are indeed Symbolic interpretations ofthe effects of mirror-stage separation and Oedipal splitting then the fragility and uncertainty surrounding issues of sexual identity are not so mysterious On the other hand normal males generally mistake having the penis with being the Phallus while normal females generally reverse the error

In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis Lacan referred to the identification by which a subject assumes the Others Desire in an Imaginary tripod where being the Phallus and having the Phallus take on meaning only in the Symbolic order (or in terms of the law ofthe signifier)22 That is identity only means in reference to the Name-of-the-Father When a question of lack is in play being the Phallus and having it become conshyfused as mutually exclusive postures Psychotics for example view

middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

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middot

themselves as transsexual neither masculine or feminine or both The psychotics deficit is a lack of the signifier for the N ame-of-theshyFather a confusion at 3 Three then is the number of the mask and of the moi ideology of sexual identity It is also the number around which ambivalent attitudes toward the Phallus coalesce Inshysofar as the phallic signifier takes on the meaning of male privilege it evokes feelings of fear reverence envy respect and so on And by definition it demands its own subversion

Iacan taught us that there is no pre-discursive reality (Shn XX pp 33-34) Language transforms all effects of images and words which make an impact on consciousness prior to speech Lacan also said that the pre-Oedipal period cannot be pinned down in analytic terms although an ordering of pre-genital stages can be conceived in analytic terms insofar as they are ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex (Ecrits 1977 p 197) My concept of an Imagishynary anticipatoryretroactive structuring of identity marked by numbers 0 to 3 would only take on precise meaning then in refershyence to language and Oedipal Desire and Law In a larger sense these numbers would prepare the stage - anticipatorily - for a retshyroactive couming from 4 to 6 (7) as the adult subject represents himshyself in the Symbolic The Imaginary text which I have hypothesized would give body to Lacans idea that memory is not an essence but a felt presence whose effects are Real More specifically one wOllld always have recourse to the three signifiers of relation in the Other which can be identified in the Oedipus complex love procreation and death

Put in other terms the human subject is constituted in refershyence to the energy generated by narcissism and Desire In the mirshyror stage the infant has the illusion of being the other and the sole object of the others regard Desire is not for someone but for fusion Once divided by repression the subject must repeat something of its being and Desire in order to constitute its status as a singular subshyject In his Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan said that what repeats itself derives from what was not namely a nameable subshyject (Ecrits I p 55) It is not quantitative physics which gives rise to human energy but numbers with which humans always arrange themselves so that a constant remains somewhere (Sem XX p 101) One constant is those things in which psychoanalysis can uncover the identical things of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth (Miller Suture p 28) But between unconshyscious truth and the subject representing itself in the Symbolic stands an opaque Imaginary text which attests that repetition as the repetition ofsymholic sameness is impossible (Strut Con p 192)

From the mOlllell anything is represented to a sul~ect tlIe

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 17: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

image is automatically a virtual imitation Even the repetition of ones body in a mirror is a distortion Only in psychosis is the as if tension resolved Having foreclosed the signifier for Castration or division the psychotic stands ready to lose the cohesive unity atshytained by the moi when it unconsciously identifies with a Name (of a father) Once the moi metaphor disperses into its component parts the je of grammatical speech loses its unifying anchor and dissolves into pseudo-speech Having fallen back onto the Imaginary 0 and I of namelessness the psychotic identifies with hollow Other imshyages verbal fragmentations and the universal ilames of the great and powerful

From an Imaginary perspective numbers 4 5 and 6 would be seen as a logical progression (synchronically speaking) a symmetrishycal inversion of numbers 32 and 1 From a diachronic viewpoint numbers 4 5 and 6 denote a mathematical recursion or a shadow extension of mirror-stage and Oedipal experiences into adult life But by inversion I do not mean that 4 5 and 6 repeat 3 2 and I in any one-to-one way Desire infers lack the number always points to the number preceding and the one following All the same a norshymative evolution from chililhood to adult life means that at numbers 45 and 6 individuals change their Imaginary positions on an Oedshyipal triangle In the pursuit of reifying narcissism and realizing Deshysire these numbers would denote a trajectory ofDesire lived Imagishynarily (cf Schema R)23 Four to six delineate a way of knowing oneshyself without having to know a way to carryon Platos hunt for knowledge without ending in death In this sense there would be no beyond the Oedipus com plex at the level of self knowledge

Within my purview 4 would be the number of exogamy While 3 would denote a process of individuation away from the primordial Other 4 would mark a distance from the family itself 3 would mark an intrasubjective effort while 4 would emphasize intersubjectivity Four would entail an adult reshaping or extension of the Oedipal structuration fixed in childhood through a type of marital bonding At 4 males and females validate their sexual identities within society in reference to the moi fictions solidified at 3 At 4 individuals play outthe sexual difference not inscribed in the unconscious as a genital drive around the masculine or feminine masquerade That relational couplings are not automatishycally harmonious and stable reflects the arbitrariness of the conshystitution of identity around a cultural gender distinction as well as the power of the unconscious over the subject At the point of oscilshylation between 3 and 4 young adults implicitly admit that psychic maturation occurs by a mediation of Desire and narcissism always in reference to others

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 18: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

In the Discours de Rome Lacan said that a subjective logic orients marriage ties in its effects - a logic predicated on the mirrorshystage and Oedipal structures and the relations they express In a larger sense an Imaginary 4 would be the symptom of any socishyetys interpretation of sexual identity Different cultural practices would reveal the historical moment and mythology in question Courtly love for example would play upon the love signifier while Catholicism has always insisted upon the signifier for procreation Whatever the individual or cultural context s 3 and 4 mark a gap between the drive for sexual (re-)union and the fact that the true partner ofeach individual is not the other but the Other (A)

In the sexual arena Woman is generally confused with the primordial ambiguities surrounding numbers 0 1 and 2 In gender myths Woman comes to represent a principle of ineffability and so is identified both with sameness and loss that is with the unconshyscious Insofar as the first loss is the loss of a fantasy of psychic wholeness the Castration trauma is Imaginarily interpreted by asshysigning a positive meaning to the principle opposing sameness ie to what differs from woman Insofar as difference is inscribed in the

as a phallic signifier this signifier which initiates sepshyaration individuation and speech becomes confused with gain What males gain is an Imaginary birthright to represent the public domain as authoritative spokespersons We are on Lacans terrain of assigning plus or minus values to the masculine or feminine Difshyference is associated with gain and is therefore registered on the plus side oflaw freedom and prestige Conversely the primordial Other sex is experienced in relation to the effects ofloss in part obshyjects and sensations that go beyond the sayable It is in this sense that I understand any minus value attached to Woman she who is not all (Sem XX p 68)

In his Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexualshy Lacan asked why marriage holds out even in the decline of

paternalism24 One might amplify Lacans speculations that woman as lack is transcendent to the order of the contract propagated by work If Woman stands for lack only insofar as she is not inscribed in the unconscious in any totalized sense it follows that Lacan viewed analysands as people in search of Woman (Miller Another Lacan p 2) Let us suggest here that exogamous relations seek to recreate the mirror-stage illusion of wholeness the One - when in reality they repeat the disharmony and dissymmetry caused by Casshytration

My interpretation of 4 finds theoretical support in Lacans picture oflhe human su~ject as being in internal exclusion to its own ()~jecLWhile the moi (heing) would reside on the slope of fixation

17

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 19: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

- the dit or ecrit - its paroles and signifieds would punctuate the disshycourse of theje where signifiers of Desire appear enigmatically 011

the slope of the dire or the non-etre of Otherness (Sem XX pp 108shy09) This split between the conscious subject of being and saying grounded somewhere between narcissism and Desire sends the subject in search of some miraculous encounter with the lost or abshysent object of Desire with whom it identifies in Imaginary fantasy (Stmc Con p 194 Sem XX p 114) Thus at 4 individuals seek to know who they are as the object of the Others Desire Bul instead of easily answering this question each person must continually reshyconstitute the moi within love relations and human relations in an effort to compensate for the loss that the Other (A) is J-A Miller has said that insofar as object a is a constant supplement to lack the constancy itself gives the illusion of synthesis25 Thus there is conshyfusion between the ideal ego its ego ideals and the mois confusion between being a subject for others and an object of the Others Deshysire

Pre-mirror mirror stage and Oedipal effects would situate cognitive development within an affective logic of identificatory fushysions and substitutive Desires And every person will develop these fantasies and myths within a set of probable choices mocking the Existentialist project of infinite self possibilities Interpretations of Real and universal experiences would therefore represent limishytations in the development of mentality and on the human capacity for processing identificatory information The way 4evolves will determine whether an Imaginary 5 or 6 will ensue Imaginarily speaking 5 would be the number of maternity or paternity in which lhechildhood Oedipal triangle develops in inverted form ill adult life A child viewed as the parental Phallus or desired object becomes a mirror of familial narcissism whose reflection is thrown back and forth

Parents both perpetuate their own narcissistic identity quesshytions in relation to theirchHdren and impose Desire on them Deshysire isboth inflicted and nurtured 5 would mark the point at which societal and familial myths can be studied in the present alshythough their origin lies in the past At 5 one finds the identificashytory importance of naming and the value a father accords his own name in paternity but also what maternity means to the mother We recall Juliet Mitchells idea that hysteria is the Oedipal illness which questions motherhood and vice versa26 Notonly does the child bring repressed parental Desire into play it also acts as a divisive force within the marital symbiosis thus reifying Imaginary Castrashytion (2) Thus in a larger sense parental relations with a child catalyze unresolved Oedipal issues

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 20: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

Number six would denote the Imaginary experience of giving value to posterity or lineage It refers to an immortality to be gained by perpetuating identity and name within family lines At 6 one finds the human effort to thwart death to mollify the intimations of mortality left in the wake of Oedipal division 6 reveals that inshycest is not the greatest taboo but death and lossTribal practices of ancestor worship or even the cannibal consumption of the aricesshytoral dead reveal an unconscious drive to perpetuate phallic power in an Imaginary denial of death Thus at 6 one findsthe epic passions surrounding legacies wills and the power rights of elshyders Eastern countries have historically attenuated individual freeplay at s 4 and 5 by requiring excessive worship of elders thus constructing social practices around the death signifier In this way the elderly are protected from loneliness and abandonment The reverse problem exists in Western countries today where the old are disenfranchised and institutionalized In narcissistic societies where exogamous freedom is highly valued grandparents and grandchildren are separated by parental divorce The sense of well-being arising from group interconnectedness is lost We might even suggest that senility could be linked to a loss of prestige and a slackening of Desire If the moi does not have to continually reconshystitute itself in the Symbolic (public) domain would there not be a retiring into an Imaginary flux Would it not be logical that memory would focus on more distant objects and events

Whatever cultural practice is in view 6 maces a physical fadshying toward death Kathleen Woodward has spoken ofa mirror-stage of old age decrepitude and narcissism27 However narcissism is reified at this stage of life the posterity bond reveals a sense of famshyily connectedness which has nothing to do with blood Mirrorshystage myths ( I) of Oneness become a part of family history And as long as relative distance from each other is ensured Desire loses t he force ofimmediacy within extended family relations Narcissism becomes a mirror of family Desire as each member is either enshyhanced or denigrated by the aura surrounding other family mem-

At first glance my interpretation of s 4 to 6 might seem to resemble r~rik Eriksons life cycle theory which Lacan so criticized (Sim I I p 179) But I intend no allegory of developmenshytal stages Numbers 4 to t) would reveal instead the power of Oedishypal Desire and repetition to organize adult life by placing the suqject in a truthful but elliptical position to itself Nor do I consider these numbers to be a numerology One must enter the order of 0 to 6 as I have portrayed it from either 0 or 6 keeping in mind that it is a necessary sequence By applying Fregean mathematics to this

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 21: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

) II

ordered set one immediately infers a recursive logic (all elements being established within an order of011) Furtbermore hecause this oto 6 sequence is linear the numbers will I1Qt enter into any comshybinatory relationship such as addition or subtraction Rather these numbers serve to establish position the position of the unconscious in making an object of thesubject Thus the mirror stage can be retshyroactively ordered (counted) at 2 and so on every positioIl heing subsumed in the Fregean formula of0 number successor This inshydeed is a primitive counting which works like a language At 6 the Symbolic would cease to establish a link to unconscious numbers because there is no Other of the Other

Lacan adduced two examples to point to the importance of 6 and 7 in daily life Jehovah distinguished himself from his sway over the six days ofthe week by adding a seventh day That is 7 denotes the capacity to count up t06 and infer one more number beyond Second Lacan said that the Babylonian counting system remained confused until they arbitrarily made the system sexigesimal 6 x 10 (Sem XX p l22) Before that they had followed the Indo-Euroshypean custom which based its counting on the number 10 (the number of human fingers) We also remember that the earliest asshytronomers the Chaldeans divided the circle into 360 degrees (6 x 6 x 10) and defined a right angle by 90 degrees (60 + 30) Perhaps all these uses of6 make sense of7 as the number ofmagic the mysshyterious mystical divine and ineffable If the impossible 7 were to denote the Lacanian Other one would find fading effects there and pure Desire or lack In tbe Other we would isolate tht source of ethics a still perplexing problem to theologians and philososhyphers - by referring to the axes ()f mirror-stage Desire and Oedipal Law Here we could also infer the elusiveness of the primordial feminine and the fragility of the privileged status accorded the masshyculine We would also ascertain the importance of repression and closure of the unconscious in establishing the social and personal limits that make life organizable One might also comprehend the regularity with which humans worship gods placing the principle of the unknown outside themselves instead of within (Cf Slim XX p44)

From another perspective 7 might be called the number of analysis Insofar as 7 is only an inferred number this would tally with Lacans saying that although the iJcrits or dits are mathematical analysis is not a mathematical thing (SeiTt XX p 105) Both the analyst who does not know what troubles the analysand and the analysand who is unconscious of what he or she does know dwell in the realm of ineffability By leading the analysand to subtract the Other from a conscious illusion of self totality the analyst can

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 22: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

It ~ Ie

open the pathway to unconscious Desire where analysands have made the world Imaginarily symmetrical to their own thought (Sem XX p 115) The task is not small Modern scientific society has abolished any tacit admission of denial and repression from its disshycourse thus negating the God-like power of unconscious knowlshyedge One remembers the eleventh-century ontological proof of Gods existence id quo maius concipi non potest (that than which

greater can be conceived) If the Lacanian Other (A) is that than which no greater can he conceived it makes sense that it would conshytain both the power ofheaven and helL

To fully grasp the idea that Oedipal effects continue to govern life through adolescence and adulthood one must return to Freuds first realist notion of fixation the inscription of representational contents persists unaltered in the unconscious Lacan tied this idea to language through the analogy of mathematical topology and hypothesized a strict equivalence between psychic structure and toshypology (Sern XX p 14) In 1964 Lacan said Nothing actually can be based on chance - calculation of possibilities strategies - which does not imply at its starting point a limited structuration of the situshyation and that in terms of signifiers (Sem XI p 40) Let us suggest that the six unconscious numbers which make meaning by opposishytion (like signit1ers) function on a 0 to 34 to 7 recursive model beshycause unconscious counting is also a function of elements in a toshypological space space being the means by which a combinatory function can occur

James Glogowski has suggested that unconscious number is the most primitive valence of meaning It would operate initially on the border of the Real but would only be recognized by a subject at age three years Children begin to count up to and beyond ten only at age three Before this age Glogowski suggests that number may be merely a reflection of the perception of the infant body in the world

the Fort Da alternance of presence and absence My concept of an Imaginary number 3 would mark the entrance of the register of the other The integration of two structures by a third would not be a bad description of topology28 Generally speaking however toshypology is the mathematical realm that studies properties of a geometric figure which do not vary when the figure is transformed Could it be that topology developed as an effect of unconscious counting of the unconscious being prior In any case topology takes one away from a limited sense of number - only one order of the Real- and gives a range of numbers a space We are back to J-A Millers statement that the subject seen as objeet takes its mean-

from its difference to the thing integrated to the Real by its spatio-temporallocalization (Suture p 27) Lacan described the

21

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 23: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

as on ill (Shn I I p 227)

The combinatory logic which Lacan found to be immanent in the original symbolism of the marriage tie may well be the pivotal moment when the topological gaps ofchildhood determine whether (or not) a subject will inscribe himself in the SYtbOlic order (Ecrits~ 1977 p 66) At this moment the three princi e one-dimensional numbers in the unconscious reappear at jun tures between Real event Imaginary symbol and Symbolic signifier as functions symshybolized by the letters ~ a and S(4) (Scm XX p 31) But whatever the combinatory interplay the three principle functions are fixed Lacan once said that the fixed and neutral value ofcertain numbers (eg 1729 will always be the sum oftwo cubes) can be equated with the fixed and neutral value of the signifiers of language (Shn II p 328) Once subjectivized and misrecognized by moi fictions as well as by the totalizing effect of the system oflanguage unconscious sigshynifiers lose any transparency of meaning although the ways in which people describe themselves invoke a moment of unconshysciously articulated structuration thus implying that there is no pure game of chance (Ie hasard Willkilr) as far as origins go (Srm I I p 226) Only in the Real does one find the arbitrary (coincidenclgt Zufall)

In support of my interpretation of Lacansidea that the unconshyscious can count I shall cite a classic article written by the Harvard psychologist George A Miller in the 19508 Miller listed the limits on absolute judgment (the moment before confusion or channel capacity takes over in the human capacity for processing informashy

being connected to the numbers 5 6 or 7 Number 7 is on human capacities in relation to one-dimensional judgshy

ments We can hear hundreds of musical notes but only remember 6 or 7 tones We use thousands of words but only identify binary and tertiary distinctions in phonemes We can identify scores of faces but only remember 60r 7 dots at a time when they are flashed on a screen 29 Other examples come to mind We have named seven colors in the spectrum derived from three primary ones Seven is also the number of generations after which according to LevishyStrauss the kinship prohibitions against spouses (incest) lapse as

~ does proscriptive mourning The reader will doubtless also be reshyminded of conventions such as the seven deadly sins the seven carshydinal and theological virtues the seven-headed Hydra the seven circles of Heaven the seven wonders of the world the seven seas seven continents seven sisters or Pleiades etc Although Miller reshyfused to reach a final conclusion he speculated that perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens something

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 24: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

)

just calling out for us to discover it (p 97) The connection between Millers experiments and Lacans

theory is obvious I have argued that Lacans numbers denote Real points of psychic juncture which derive from a mirror-stage and Oedipal structuring ofmentality In a book entitled Thematic Origins ofScientific Thought the physicist Gerald Holton has argued that cershytain symbolic structures are at the base of diverse and apparently dismnnected theories Pointing to a homogeneous manner of funcshytioning behind heterogeneous facets Holton terms such manner of function a three-dimensional space or proposition spacelO The idea of a three-dimensional space brings to mind Lacans enigmatic statement that the unconscious can count to six because it cannot find the number two again except via the three of revelation (Shn XX p (22) This statement might be interpreted to mean that a pershysons name (2) takes on its full meaning in reference to a sexual identity (3) or the place of the Phallus in the Other (A) Thus 0 to 3 represent what is written in childhood the conditions ofjouisshysance which will delimit adult life these conditions being the necesshysary which never stops writing itself (Sem XX p (17)

Lacan said that what generally writes itself is an ordinary desshytiny (Ecrits 1966 p 57) In an ordinary destiny others playa pacifyshying role establishing a libidinal normativity and a cultural normativshyity bound up from the dawn of history with the imago of the fatherH In fact Lacans use of knot theory visually depicts this idea Lacan described a knot as a fact which represents the various points at which a subject has access to the Real Even though knots denote impasses of the impossible -joins of the invisible to the Real

they also belong to the Real Generally speaking knots symbolize the multiple cuts and intersections which occur in the Other (A) to form the human subject The knot in the figure 8 for example deshynotes the effect of the phallic signifier (the fathers imago) in dividing the human subject But knots themselves have nothing to do with the space they cut into a surface Such space as in the Borromean knot is not really three-dimensional - an idea based on the translashytion of our bodies into a solid volume (Sem XX p 120-21) Instead Lacan pointed us toward the three directions of space as distinshyguished by Descartess coordinates

Lacans proposition space then is not based on the literalism of physical realities but on the knots deriving from mirror-stage and Oedipal structures The Borromean knot creates three dimenshysions in one feU swoop a trinity Paradoxically when a line (or piece of thread) is cut into two its surface appears to be cut into a space of three because of the intersecting knots (Sem XX p 1(0) It is interesting to note that one counts seven spaces within the Borshy

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 25: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

romean circles suggesting n + 132 Perhaps the Borromean knot depicts the Imaginary intersected by the Symbolic whose impact is Real Analytically speaking the space structured around the joins of these orders would be inferred into discourse as a topology of fixed messages and past effects in the Other (A) which operate lanshyguage and perception ensuring that it be neither linear nor purely conscious

Although the Borromean knot coincides at six points all of these can be unraveled leaving a round piece of string with only one knot This knot with the numerical value of 0 would represent the privileged phallic signifierThis signifier also called thetranscenshydental signified is that around which personal and social meaning is organized Its Real effects come into play in analysis because the signifying knots preceding and followjJlg it must be interpreted in reference to it Thus within my schema of six Imaginary numbers the phallic signifier would stand in the middle ofa set of meaningful ensembles each in itself a complete constellation implying the one preceding or following it Lacans unconscious numbers would not from my perspective be invented Insofar as they denote Real events which are interpreted by Symbolic codes to produce an Imagshyinary homogeneous (one-dimensional) kind of identificatory thought these numbers are not unlike Levi-Strausss mathematishycal tools They too would offer a way to formalize some rules undershylying apparently erratic phenomena3

1

In conclusion we face one of Lacans majestic and difficult inshysights Structure is both anticipatory and retroactive static and dyshynamic pre-discursive and discursive Structure operates on differshyent levels transforming conscious life and language by infusing unshyconscious elements and invisible effects into it One path to the truths in the unconscious lies in the discovery that Imaginary myths are distorted interpretations of the Others Desire that of which the analysand is unaware (Sem II p 353) The task of the an2ist is to teach the analysand to separate one from the other and this deconstructing the Imaginary discourse oflovejealousy agshygre siveness Desire and soon The result will reveal a fundamental disorder in human representations rather than any neat evolution of sexual stages (Sem II pp 209-10) The Imaginary contains disasshysociated sets of relations (pertaining to six unconscious numbers) where the unconscious the perceptual the visual and the verbal are equated (Sem II p 147) These relations reveal structure which goes all the way from the effects ofia langue to intimations ofmortalshyity From this perspective the Symbolic constitution of the subject will always resurface into conscious life organized around six pivotal unconscious numbers These numbers which are real unishy

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(

Page 26: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

versal and natural are to be found I submit in the domain of Imaginary realism

Notes

1 Le Seminaire deJacques Lacan Livre XX Encore (1972-73) text estabshylished by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 122

2 Jacques-Alain Miller Suture (elements of the logic of the sigshynifier) Screen 18 No4 (Winter 1977178) pp 24-34

3 Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan Livre II Le mOl dans la tMorie de Freud et dans La technique de la psychanalyse (1954-55) text established by JacquesshyAlain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1978) p 353

4 Ernst Cassirer The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1953) quoted in Theodore Thass-Thienemann The Interpretation Languagf Vol I Undentanding the Symbolic Meaning of Language (New York Jason Aronson 1973) p 325

5 Cassirer p 333 Cf also Wilfred R Biol1 Sevl7 Ser(lant~ (New YOIk Jason Aronson Inc 1l77)p105

6 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan Jacques Lawn amp tltemiddot PltilolIphy Psychoana(ysis forthcoming in 1984 from the Univ of Illiriois Press cf chapter 4

7 Jacques-Alain Miller Another Lacan Lacan Study Notes A Nlwshtshytnmiddot 1 No 1 (Feb 1984) p 3

8 Jacques Lacan Of Structure as an lnmixing of an Otherness Preshyrequisite to any Subject Whatever in The Structuralist Controversy eds Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press 1975) p 193

9 Although he does not refer to the Lacanian logic of the signifier in relation to repetition and truth W R Bion seems close to it when he says A thing cannot exist in the mind alone nor can a thing exist unless at the same time there is a corresponding no-thing in Seven Servants p 103

10 Jacques Lacan Le Seminaire sur La LeUrI Votee (1966) in Ecrits (Paris Editions du Seuil 1966) p 56

II Ie Shninaire de Jacques Lacan Livre VllI LEthique unpublished Decemher 23 1959

12 PelS(mal telephone conversation with James Glogowski March 1984

13 Charles Melman On Obsessional Neurosis trans Stuart Schneiderman in Returning to Freud Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan ed Stuart Slthneiderman (New Haven Yale Univ Press 1980) p 137

14 Lf Shnin~1ire delacques Lacan Livrf I Les ecrit~ techniques de Freud (195-54) lex I established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions du Seuil 1975) p 249

)

~

I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

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Page 27: Ellie Ragland "Counting From 0 to 6 - Lacan"

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I) 1 Sftnin(in dlIl11qllS 11((U til IiI IS Ifllllln (01(1111111(11 I

tmJX (19()4) text established by Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris Editions ell Seuil 1973) pp 165 181

I H Jacques Lacan Tlte Four Fundamental Concepts o Psycto-AU(Isis trans Alan Sheridan (New York Norton 1978) p viii

17 Stuart Schneiderman Jacques Laean The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1983) pp 2-8

18 Jacques Lacan The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953) in Ecrits A Selection trans by Alan Sheridan (New York W W NortonampCo Inc 1977) p 59 Cf footnote 33 p 108

19 Jacques Lacan Propos sur la causalite psychique Ecri~~ p 186 20 In their book Laean and Language A Readers Guide to Ecrits

York International Universities Press 1982) John P Muller and William J Richardson point out that Lacan changes his early statements that the mirror stage originates at six months postulating eight months in Some Reflections on the Ego International Journal ofPsychoanalysis 34 ( 1953) p 14

21 James Glogowski Concepts of Literary Analysis unpublished ms p14

22 Jacques Lacan On a question preliminary to any possihle trealshyment ofpsychosis in Emts p 207

23 Lacan On a question preliminary to any possible trealment p 207 Cf the Schema R where Symbolic and Imaginary triangles coalesce to denote ego ideal (Infant) signifier of primordial o~ject (Mother) posishytion of the Name-of-the-Father (Phallic image) p 196

24 Jacques Lacan Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality (1958) in Feminine Sexuality Jacques Lacan lind the Fwt Freudienne edJuliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York W W Norshyton amp Co 1983) p 98

25 Jacques-Alain Miller Teachings of the Case Presentation in Reshyturning to Freud p 51

26 Juliet Mitchell The Question of Femininity and the Theory of Psychoanalysis oral presentation at SUNY-Buffalo Nov 11 1983

27 Kathleen Woodward Instant Repulsion Decrepitude The Mirshyror Stage and The Literary Imagination The Kenyon Review 5 No4 (Fall 1983) pp 43-66

28 Personal correspondence James Glogowski pp 2-3 of a letter dated March 191984

29 George A Miller The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Some Limits on our Capacity for P1Oeessing Information The Psychological Review 63 No2 (March 1956) pp 81-97

30 Gerald Holton Thematic Origins of ScientiFic Thought (Cambridge Harvard Univ Press 1973) pp 57~58

31 Jacques Lacan Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) in Sherishydan Ec1its p 22

32 Jacques Lacan Ronds de Ficelle in Seminaire XX p 119 cr the example of Figure 9

33 Jean-Marie Benoist La Revolution Structurale (Paris Denoell Gonthier 1980) p 330

(