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OBJET A AND THE PASS IN THE SCHOOL OF LACAN

Summary: In the ‘Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the psychoanalyst of the School’, Lacan first laid out the procedure of the Pass; to be practiced in the School he founded, L’École Française de Psychanalyse. The founding text of Lacan’s School states that the analyst only authorizes themselves, but “this does not rule out the School guaranteeing that an analyst has been formed by it.” (1967) The Pass itself sought to answer a question Lacan himself was preoccupied with in the training and formation of psychoanalysts: has an analysis produced an analyst? An analyst within Lacan’s School(s) may undertake the Pass to answer this question as the analyst of their own case. The passant delivers their testimony of the end or ends of their analysis to two passeurs; who then relate what they heard to what has been called at different times a jury or cartel of the Pass. If their testimony has been heard to have produced an analyst, the passant is nominated an Analyst of the School for a period of two to three years, in which they speak about their testimony and are put to work on the crucial problems of psychoanalysis and the School. A second question could then be asked based on a reading of testimonies of the Pass: what of the object a in the Pass, at the end of analysis? Through a close reading of testimonies of the Pass of the Schools of Lacan which today practice the Pass, this paper will attempt to examine the object a in the procedure of the Pass, and what may remain of it at the end of analysis, of an analyst that is nominated to an Analyst of the School.

The Function of the Gaze and the Mother-Child Relationship in the Subjectification of a Physically Disabled Child

Physically disabled children suffer from the gaze of the people they meet and with whom they interact. They are confronted with their difference and are obliged to take up a position against this confrontation. First, through a review of relevant literature the author characterizes the gaze in the relation between a physically disabled child and the Other. The child’s identity is shaped through what is offered by others. At birth a child is positioned in the family, at the point where parental expectations meet reality and the child’s disability evokes in the parents feelings of guilt and shame. The author asserts that the mother’s gaze reduces the child to their disability. To understand this, the gaze is described as objet a (Lacan, 1973 [1964]). Then, the author explores the physically disabled child’s response to the Other’s gaze. Two possible responses are considered: the child may choose to adopt a seemingly passive position, whereby he undergoes the interaction; on the other hand, the child may explicitly expose him or herself to the Other, perhaps even exaggerating their dysfunction. The author concludes that speaking about the disability can help the child to find the words to talk about their own dysfunction and to take up a bearable position in response to their disability.

Lacan’s encounter with a Buddhist statue and the gaze as objet

The article examines Lacan’s use of a personal experience recollected from his recent vacation in Japan, recorded in Seminar X (1962-1963) Anxiety. This experience occurred in connection with a Japanese Buddhist statue, and the contemplative relation Lacan observed with respect to it. Lacan utilises his recollection of this experience in his teaching activity, specifically to introduce the question of the objet a in the scopic field. In order to use this experience Lacan was led in the seminar to comment on the relation between psychoanalysis and Buddhism, specifically on the statement that “desire is illusion” and on the central Buddhist teaching of “non-duality” and the article revisits Lacan’s discussion. Lacan also gave the iconographic references which he understood to characterise the statue in question. Some research work reveals the possible identity of this Buddhist statue, both in terms of its actual location and its iconography and identifies it as the “Pensive Prince” or the Bodhisattva Maitreya, situated in Chūgūji monastery at Nara. The article then offers a commentary and analysis of Lacan’s theory of the relation between the eye and the emerging concept of the gaze, in order to illustrate the operation of desire in the field of vision. It shows how Lacan has utilised an example of sublimation in the scopic field in order to communicate to his listeners a development in his theory concerning the gaze as partial object of the scopic drive as well as an historical-cultural sublimation, as exemplified in the Buddhist statue.

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