A Continuation Of The Debate Between Two Italian Lacanian Analysts

From Perrella to Sciacchitano
Padua, 11th September 1997

Dear Antonello,
        This exchange of letters seems important to me, because it gives us an opportunity to clarify points that do not concern only us. This is why I shall respond to your objections point per point, again, begging you to reply. Most certainly we will not manage to find ourselves in agreement on everything (and I cannot see why we should). Still, perhaps we could find agreement on the fundamental points, so the game seems to me all to be played yet.
        Naturally, I completely agree with you on some points. There can be no doubt, for example, that the evangelical quotation to which you make reference expresses a truly ethical position. There can be no doubt, also, that you have every right to feel regret when  - referring to the fact than among our confreres (as they curiously say in French) there are few who have an interested in such an 'intellectual' programme - you conclude that 'they do not think'. On the other hand, I am not sure whether it is enough to have an experience of the unconscious in order to acquire a capacity for thinking. It seems to me that, instead, those who refuse to think would find it quite difficult to undertake an analysis. Further, sometimes it seems as if ending and analysis and possibly becoming an analyst leads to loosing the habit… For example, are all those who let themselves be sustained by an imaginary adhesion to a certain psychoanalytic creed still thinking? I have had to ask myself this question because I have witnessed too many psychoanalytic conferences where nothing else was done than to enunciate the lacanian lecture.
        But now I come to the first important point of disagreement with you. When we say that these people do not think, are we expressing an ethical judgement? If we were you would have caught me with my hand in the bag - as you say you have done when you accuse me of contradicting myself, believing that for an analyst it is a sign of cowardice not to take a political position in relation to law 56. But this is not at all the case, either for me or for you, because ethically no one can or must judge someone else's act. The only truly ethical imperative is the evangelical one not to judge. Now, when I suggest that cowardice could be the position partly held by many of us (perhaps even myself), am I expressing an ethical judgement? Absolutely not, because this is a moral matter. Of course, this last word is redundant among us psychoanalysts, although we do not do well to continue talking about ethics in a way that makes morals seem like its opposite. Morals, instead, contains criteria of general judgement on behaviours and acts that are not only inevitable, but also absolutely necessary. Indeed, in as much as they are formulated in words judgements are always general. This is why it is not only difficult but even impossible to judge ethically.
        Of course, here there is the question about the judgement we pass on ourselves. This is a difficult point, on which I touched in my comment regarding the Letter to the Romans. What I think is that when one judges, one cannot but feel each one of his acts as ethically insufficient. I am not only referring, here, to what Freud says in relation to the Super-Ego (if anything, this is just a consequence). I am referring also to the fact that to judge oneself to be in the right means, indeed, to commit an act of pride. This does not mean that one who acts well has no knowledge of it. But one thing is to know it and another is to say it. This is why those who give a religious direction to their existence attribute all the good that they accomplish to a power outside themselves, and to themselves only all the sins. This is not the result of some hypocrisy but of an entirely structural ethical reason.
        Therefore, when I express a fear or even a general judgement, I do not exclude that for someone else the contrary could be true. What I know for sure is that Spaziozero will loose every function, unless it takes some clear and public positions on the problem of the analysts' formation and of their judicial position. This has nothing to do with my predilection for small political games (of which I never sin, given my complete repulsion for all that has to do with this sort of thing). It depends instead on an awareness, which I hope is ethically well founded (I hope, because I cannot say to be certain of it).
        But let us come to a second problem. You say that because it 'does not aim at any elevation of the spirit' psychoanalysis is 'for nothing'. From a logical point of view, you will admit that this is really not a great deduction. That something does not have the function of elevating the spirit does not mean that it has no function at all. Of course, we must understand each other about what we mean by 'useful'. When I say that psychoanalysis is for forming (whereas psychotherapy has the function of eliminating a symptom) I am not at all original, because, in a different way, I am only repeating what Lacan says when he holds that didactic analysis is finite analysis. On the other hand, it seems to me that to say that psychoanalysis has no uses whatsoever corresponds neither to reality, nor to what you yourself believe (in fact, if you really believed this, you could no longer place any difference, for example, between a correct theory and one that is incorrect and reductive). Third problem: the One. Maybe once you have read my paper we will have an opportunity to 'fight' about this for a very long time. When you say that 'the One becomes undone', I could ask you: and are the parts produced in this way not also 'ones' as the original was? I gave a seminar on this, which I sent to you hoping that you would tell me what you think of it. Of course, it did occur to me that you would disagree with much of what I said. But, if this were the case, why not say so? Or else, were all my statements so banal as to deserve not even the slightest consideration? Finally, I really cannot see what relationship there might be between falling from the throne of the phantom and the One.
        But let us come to the most important point. Your thesis (which, of course, is not only yours) is certainly not 'revolutionary'. Whether you know it or not, it is, instead, intolerably reactionary. The judicial positivism that you and the solicitors defend, as if it were the most obvious thing on earth, corresponds to that ideology of rights that favoured no less than the birth of Nazism. I am not at all exaggerating. Indeed, to say that the State has the right to legislate anything means to totally separate the sphere of rights from that of justice, and, in so doing, to authorise any regime to do whatever it wishes.
        There are certainly very respectable precedents, some of which are disturbingly close to Freud. I am referring to Kelsen, who nevertheless realised that he had committed a very big mistake, on which he wrote a palinode. But since 1945 (!!!), among the philosophers of rights, judicial positivism (which is nothing other that the name for statism) no longer benefits from the slightest prestige - although it is true that those who have a judicial formation are still, today, in the worst position to elaborate a conception of rights that is different from the one you believe to be normal. Despite this, nobody continues to believe, as you do, that the State can legislate on anything (other than the solicitors, that is, who notoriously know nothing about philosophy of rights). Indeed, to believe this is to confuse legitimation with legislation. If you want a small bibliography, I can let you have an essential and very useful one.
        On this point, dear Antonello, I shall never let go. The problem is one of global politics, even one of nothing less than civilization. In other words, it is a matter that concerns something more than psychoanalytic disappointments. I am saying this from my position, which has never been, nor will ever be that of a politician. Sure, I shall never bore you again with the ministerial commissions. But I shall continue to do so with regard to the necessity for the supporters of Spaziozero to clarify their ideas about these general political (and ethical) folds in relation to their own positions. From this point of view, Freud's übertreten could have worked only before Nazism, when in Europe there was still a liberalism that today has almost disappeared (and which has never existed in Italy). But Freud is not a great example, as he belongs to the number of Jews who did not believe in the existence of concentration camps (until they themselves ended up there, as it would have happened to him had he not been supported by Bonaparte).

With affection,
Ettore

From Sciacchitano to Perrella
Milan, 16th September 1997

Dear Ettore,
        I too believe that this correspondence is important, as it allows the expression of positions that are difficult to understand in the printed form. For example, if I were to publish what I wish to say to you today, I would have to inscribe it with the title of 'serwild' (1) psychoanalysis. Even among the most tolerant journals of Spaziozero, which one would allow me to do so? Yes, it is not a typing error: 'serwild psychoanalysis' is not Romanesque style psychoanalysis. It is the psychoanalysis that calls to servitude, which, as Lacan says, is typical of human sciences (in La science et la vérité he speaks of their appel à la servitude, cfr. Écrits p. 859). I see the greatest amount of servile appeal in that deterioration of the busybodies belonging to the human sciences by now legalised as psychotherapy. Is it worth remembering that the first meaning of terapéia is servitude?
        Psychotherapy is the shadow discourse of the master. It aims at conforming suffering people to the master's ideals, promising that afterwards they will all be happy. Psychotherapy, in fact, does the 'good' (this would be enough to differentiate it from psychoanalysis) not for the individual, as it farcically holds, but for the master. Its practice does not need much subjective formation: it is enough that the candidate learns to use the cucullary muscles (so the anatomists call them in the old days, as they supported the cucullus - the cap - of the good councillors, who knew how to bend their heads to the dictates of the ruler).
        Dear Ettore, having made this brief theoretical preamble, you can easily understand that what I hold at a practical and political level cannot be taken as Stalinism. I only hold that the State has the right to intervene in the exercising of the cucullary muscles of its councillors…  if we wish to become these. This is not Stalinism but tolerance. I myself have no wish to become a councillor of the State. Consequently, I have no interest in the cursus honorum that the State promises to its employees. I belong to a discourse that is opposite to that of the master and its servile shadow. Psychoanalysis cannot be servitude, psychotherapy can. Therefore, the rebellion against the law that regulates psychotherapy seems to me the miserable rebellion of the servant against the master. I am not surprised to find some Catholics amongst the Spartacuses of the insurrection. It fits into the tradition of the Catholic Church's rebellion of the eighteen hundreds against the Italian State.  But I am surprised to find you among them, a lay thinker. Are you under the influence of some unknown curse?
        I do appreciate your ear pulling. The term 'morals' does need to be re-evaluated by analysts. Personally, I reserve it to the package of moral norms reducible to the activities of the Super-Ego. But this dutiful recognition is not enough. One should also have the courage to recognise that ethical demand (Anspruch) is on the side of the Id, which is even isomorphous to the demand of the drive (therefore, in this linguistic construction, highly intellectual). The necessary work to make this position pass through the resistances of the analyst (his formation being a further resistance) is enormous. In the first instance, it requires an intellectual effort to reactivate the channels across eidetic truth ('Ethic Truth' today sounds like an oxymoron, since the first is relegated to the noetic plain, whilst the second to the dianoetic). In the second, it is necessary to weaken the weight of the Super-Ego in our associations (it is impossible to eliminate it), and, at the same time, give back a voice to the Id that 'cannot say what it wants' (The Ego and the Id, last lines). The measure that guides me to the boundary of judgement - not to judgement, in this you are correct - is Heidegger's: 'We are only what we have the strength to demand from ourselves' (The Essence of Truth, comment on the myth of the cave). But the practical work, too, is not less demanding. It requires that we activate social bonds between ourselves that are less marked by the Super-Ego and more marked by the Id. Wilder, then? No, more attentive to that, which, still unwritten, continues to beat in the unconscious of each one of us. The re-launching of psychoanalysis is born out of the scriptures of still unwritten laws.  In relation to this, I am very interested in what you have to say about the unconscious as an over-essential fact. It seems useful, to me, to get away from a certain neo-Platonism (from which all conformists drink, starting with some transvestites among the 'human scientists' - perhaps dressed in the black tunic of the uncomfortable and rebellious priest, or in the white cloak of the cognitivist doctor).
        Who knows, by ways still unknown to me, this discourse might link up again to what I had to say about the one: the one that becomes undone and the one that is in 'extension'. It is the one of the good totality. It is the one that unifies social masses. It is the one that becomes undone and becomes fragmented with psychoanalysis. The fragments are the signifiers, which are the ones that do not become undone - I conventionally call them the ones in 'intension', to differentiate them from the 'one in extension' or of mass. These are the 'ones' that run across the world to gather other masses (by identification, as Freud says) and unify other Egos.
        In the history of the psychoanalytic movement, these two types of 'ones' have counterpoised one another in a singular way. My vision of this history, elaborated with Sergio Contardi, is simple. The divisions of the analytical movement - all but one - have occurred in the name of psychotherapy, which, at an individual level, proposes the reconstruction of the imaginary unity of the Ego as a therapeutic end, and, at a social level, advances ideals of adaptation and civil homeostasis.  With psychotherapy we are in the realm of the 'one in extension', the 'one' that comes undone. So you see Adler contesting Freud because he takes no notice of the inferiority of the organ; you see Jung contesting Freud because he takes no notice of psychic energy; you see Fromm contesting Freud because he takes no notice of the dynamics of the socio-environmental factor. They all demand that we get into the bag of the 'one' through the route of psychotherapeutic conformism. But Freud has always turned a deaf year to the servile discourse. Not because he was a master (had he been one, he would have appreciated all these!), but because he had something new to fry in his little pan: the signifier 'psychoanalysis', in which he was more interested than in social conventions. The moral: Freud has always gone down his own path behind the 'one in intension', which, as yet, the efforts of the scientific discourse have not manage to remove: the signifier 'psychoanalysis', as I said.
        I spoke of an exception. Lacan produces the new and definitive split in the analytical movement - which, whitened by scientificity, in the mean time had become a psychotherapeutic movement in the hands of Jewish conformism labelled as International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). But he did so in a topsy-turvy way, reproducing no less than psychoanalysis itself. This is why he claimed to have made a return to Freud, but with a difference in relation to him. After Lacan, in fact, the splits no longer occur in the name of psychotherapy, but, rather, in the name of small narcissistic differences, fostered by little people, who have gone onto the scene either as little Lacans or as great lacanians. In reality, Lacan has advanced the theoretical clarification of psychoanalysis to the point where there is no escape for cowards. Indeed, after Lacan, the risk is that there can be only 'pentiti' (2) of psychoanalysis. Dear Ettore, are we the 'pentiti' of psychoanalysis?

With affection and curiosity,
Antonello

        P.S.: I am interested in resuming your thesis on the impossibility of ethical judgement in Freudian terms. Freud has elaborated a true doctrine of judgement at various points: it goes from the Project to Metapsychology (Unconscious), to the Mystic Writing Pad, to Negation. I start ab ovo, that is, from the Project (I, SS 16). I translate:
'Judgement is a process made possible by the inhibition of the Ego and activated by the lack of resemblance between the investment of desire of a memory and an analogous perceptive investment. The outcome could be that the coincidence of the two investments will become a biological signal that puts an end to the activity of thinking and gives way to discharge. On the contrary, the non-coincidence of these stimulates the work of thinking, which again ends at the next coincidence.'
        What does this mean? That we should not formulate ethical judgement? That in the field of ethics one can never arrive to the act? That the constant inhibition of the Ego is valid? It would be, then, a truly intellectual inhibition - that of ethical judgement - that never arrives at formulating itself and never 'discharges' itself into the act. Why? Because there is a perceptive fault? Because there is a lack of 'ethical' memory? How do you understand this?
I think that there is something to be rescued from your thesis. For example, that ethical judgement cannot be an adjustment to the dictates of an already written law (judicial law). But how does one get to the Freudian 'discharge'? A way of doing so could be to admit that ethical activity - at least, that of analysts - is like that which is realised in analysis: by writing laws until now still not written, as those of an Antigonean memory would be - Heidegger would say: 'by leading to unconcealment'. The occasion to do so could be whichever. Even law 56 can be an occasion to write ethical novelties and, even, to forge new bonds between analysts - as I hope will be the case for us.

(1) Original text 'servaggia', a pun devised by Sciacchitano that condenses servile (servile) and selvaggia (wild).
(2) 'Pentito (Italian repented, plural pentiti) is the name customarily given to former members of an Italian Mafia who have abandoned their organisation and started helping in investigations… The pentiti's… correct technical name in Italian is collaboratori di giustizia ('Justice collaborators'). In exchange for the information they deliver, pentiti receive shorter sentences for their crimes, in some cases even freedom. In the Italian judicial system, pentiti can obtain personal protection, a new name, and some money to start a new life in another place, possibly abroad. This practice is common in other countries as well: in the United States, criminals testifying against their former associates can enter the Witness Protection Program, and be given new identities, with supporting paperwork.'
(From Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentiti).

From Perrella to Sciacchitano
Padua, 18th September 1998

Dear Antonello,
        First of all, I would like to ask your permission to publish our correspondence, as it is, in the next volume of Arché. I do think that this exchange of ideas could be important for others too.
        I now come to your letter dated 16th September. That psychoanalysis can be wild, as you write, is very true. But is psychotherapy always so? If you asked my opinion, I would immediately reply that I think it is, always. But one thing is to believe this, and another is to make it a generalising statement that would contrast with that of Lacan, according to whom the experience of psychoanalysis is totally enclosed within the analysand. This is a crucial principle, by itself sufficient to demolish any judicial criteria (that is to say, general) about the authorisation to practice as a psychoanalyst; and I can see no reason why it should not be extended to any form of psychotherapy (even to those that I find totally unacceptable). From it, Lacan drew the consequence that only the recognition of occurred formation would be possible (but then, despite the passé, he came to declare that this is reversible). So, who can give this recognition, and in the name of what? This is why having left the SISEP (1) I did not set up a psychoanalytic association (I have never thought of doing so), but something called Accademia Platonica delle Arti (2)  (!!!). Sure, some analysts do belong to this, but, within it, no one has a title to legitimise his or her formation (not even I). Is this a radical, extremist, maximalist solution? I don't know and I don't care. In my view, it is the only possible one. This is why I have not much faith in the creation of psychoanalytic associations, if these continue to operate according to the old principle of assigning titles.
        This is why, when you say that the State has the right to 'intervene in the exercise of the cucullary muscle of its councillors', I truly believe that this kind of tolerance is not a virtue. It would be so for the ideas of others, only as long as these others do not try to impose them on someone else. But a 'State' psychotherapy - should there ever be one (and, fortunately, we are not at this point yet…) - in no way should be tolerated, just as it would be intolerable for a State law to impose on me that I should go to Church every Sunday, or to the Mosque every Friday. You, instead, dear Antonello, with your tolerance, would tolerate this too, and even that the State makes soap out of six million Jews (to return to the previous example). In other words: what is it to tolerate other people's intolerance (even more so, if the other is the State) if not unaware, and indeed, because of it, even more unforgivable cowardice?
With regard to the slave and the master, I take the liberty to remind you that, in a democratic State, sovereignty - that is, the capacity to decide on exceptional states, as Schmitt would put it (who was definitely not a Nazi) - rests with the people: that is, with me, you and all the others. It is you, who, by attributing all rights to it, transforms the State into a master. Now, what is it to do so? The name is idolatry, which is the greatest of all sins, because it grants to the State the rights that only belong to God (who, thankfully, has never given us a law against psychotherapy). Consequently, I shall now toss the omelette. Although I care very little to be seen as a layman, it is not at all me who is 'under the influence of some unknown curse'. Rather, it is all of those - and they are the pressing majority - who do not notice the great contradiction into which they are immersed by confusing tolerance with a totalitarian statism, in which those jurists who deserve to be called so have no longer believed for more than half a century (already in 1935, Schmitt said that the State is no longer the dominant political force). The unpleasant thing is that this is not at all a curse, but the well-known and very banal effect of our loss of inclination for thinking. Instead, we spend our time mucking about with tools of communication, having lost any capacity to suspect that, whilst we muck about, a political class of infamous cultural level churns out confused and messy laws and decrees that recognise only criteria of power, whilst totally neglecting any judicial criteria. These sorts of operations are certainly part of Italian law, and to disobey them would lead to a position of illegality. But this does not mean that when the State approves such laws it operates legally. At this point, two hypothesis begin to emerge from the rights that have been formulated over the last fifty years:
 
1.         an illegitimate law can be transgressed on moral grounds, but the transgressor remains condemnable in judicial terms.
2.         An illegitimate law must be changed, because it has not and has never had any judicial value.  
            
        The second position, which seems extreme, corresponds to that adopted in all those States that have a Constitution; whereas in others (England, United States and, if even in a more limited way, Germany) one is not even required to refer the matter to a Constitutional court (because, often, a judge can formulate a contra legem sentence).
        Having said this, I know full well that you are not consciously a coward, a statist and a totalitarian; so much so, that, with complete serenity, you pass from enunciating principles that I find truly incomprehensible, to drawing from them absolutely correct consequences - as you do when you quote Heidegger: 'We are only what we have the strength to demand from ourselves'. This is an ethical principle, on the basis of which each one of us may only judge one's self. Consequently, when I pull your ear and you do the same with me, in reality, we are not at all judging one another (and it is precisely this that is so extraordinary!). As far as I am concerned, I am only trying to demonstrate to you what are the consequences of those positions that to you seem to think totally correct. 
        Naturally, I could be wrong, but so could you.
        I now come to the final great question: 'are we the 'pentiti' of psychoanalysis?' As far as I am concerned certainly not, if with the term psychoanalysis we are referring to the fundamental task (ethical and scientific) of Freud and all the others. But, quite frankly, if, instead, I think of what psychoanalysis continues to become, I must tell you that I feel a thousand miles away from this swamp of stupidity and superficiality that, to top it all, appoints itself with badges of the soul.
With regard to the problem about ethical judgement (a truly complex one), I attach a piece that is due to come out in Arché's volume on anorexia. It is only a first approach on this problem, but I hope it will be enough to give you an approximate idea of how I think it should be pursued.
In the mean time, I say goodbye to you with affectionate gratitude, not only for your 'tolerance', but because we are truly exchanging some ideas (something that, with a confrère, has happened to me only very rarely).

Ettore

(1) Italian Section of the European School of Psychoanalysis.
(2) Platonic Academy of the Arts.

From Sciacchitano to Perrella
Milan, 22nd September 1997

Dear Ettore,
        Your arguments have touched me. They have nailed me to the ultimate responsibility that we, tolerant people, carry: in evangelical terms, that of tolerating those who are intolerant. For sure, in the scenario prefigured by you, should there be an imposition of 'State' psychotherapy tomorrow, I would have the anorexic satisfaction of being able to say: 'I told you so: the truth of psychotherapy is that it belongs to the State'. At that point, it would be too late to oppose statism, and it would not be an act of great cowardice to surrender the weapons. On the other hand, at that point, it would be a duty to recognise that, ahead of it, we did not fight hard enough against statism.
        I shall repeat to you my way of committing myself to the politics of psychoanalysis, which you seem not to have fully understood yet. It is a way that makes practice secondary to theory, at least for as long as we still have time to think and we don't have to rush to action with the enemy on our doorstep. That is why I do not become agitated, as you do, by a 'messy' law. Instead, going round the logical factors that produce laws such as this, I attempt to surprise the legislator from behind.
        Therefore, I am speaking of the weakening of binarism, which is not just a nice intellectual programme, but, also, promises a certain practical efficacy. Indeed, in my opinion, one should not fight the laws that regulate conformism directly, but by aiming at the heart of their ideological matrix that have been always the dictates of that Aristotelian logic, for which the contrary of false is truth and the contrary of truth is false - to the exclusion of any possible third. Having established the principle of truth as that of adjustment, this logic, in the hand of the powerful of the moment, judges whether society conforms or not to its ideals. If it does not, it knows what to do (the third is there, within such a logic as within any respectable logic, but cannot be seen - in theory it is metalanguage, in practice it is the master. Of course, if only society knew less dictatorial laws than the binary one… But for society, too, it is more convenient to conform to the powerful so as to appoint itself the title of 'healthy' (1).
        Dear Ettore, I think that, we could do much more against the statist demands of law 56 by publishing our correspondence, than by associating ourselves with the psychologists' trade-unions in order to defend their conformist cause. After all, they do not need our little help, nor do they ask for it. And, most of all, they do not wish us to compromise with our idealism their commercial enterprise - the big business of the schools of psychotherapeutic 'conformation'. As far as I can see, all psychotherapists have rushed to register on their list, and others can't wait to do so. On the side of the analysts, some (not many) have shown a comprehensible reluctance to enlist under the flagship that calls to the wild. But, I ask myself, why should these few obstruct the many who, coherently, tend towards what their nature has shown as being the Supreme Good - subjugation not to the unconscious, but to the discourse of the master?  Is it a challenge? If so, what has psychoanalysis to do with it? Why do you want to use the good name of psychoanalysis to prevent people from achieving what they believe is good for them? Because it isn't good? But they don't know that. Let them kid themselves. Or are you less tolerant than I am? Can you not tolerate the ignorance of others? In analysis, I have been working with (against?) the will not to know for twenty-five years.
        And now I come to more painful notes: what use can we make of Spaziozero? Spaziozero is called to take a political position otherwise it will soon disappear. This will not be easy, because in this movement there are three theoretical souls that, somehow, correspond to the Platonic ones: the vegetative, the animal, and the intellectual. Cold and mechanical, the vegetative germinates in Baldini, who wants a scientific psychoanalysis without a subject, teachable in some private university that is run by a rector (2). Noble and passionate, the animal soul resides in those who believe that psychoanalysis is the ideal apex of psychotherapy. For these, among which I see wandering you restless shadow, the truth of psychotherapy is not the State - as I have said - but psychoanalysis itself. This is a bedazzlement generated by political passion, which does not escape to the analysis of the intellectual soul. For this soul, analysis is an endeavour that reforms the intellect, with no other aim than that of leading the subject to the Freudian Urteilsverwerfung, the ethical operation of a revision of the judgement concerning the removed desire - an operation that is useless to the powerful, and rarely belongs to the conforming psychotherapeutic programmes.
        Not many sustain this ethical and theoretical position. Nevertheless, a few can be found, for example, in the psychoanalytic association known as APLI, Istituto Per la Formazione Teorica Permanente (3). I know that you are not keen on psychoanalytic associations, and in many ways I would agree with you. They are either bureaucratic Churches, or Mafia gangs. If I waste my time in a psychoanalytic association, is because I believe that I can get out of a binary logic that 'conforms' the Ego to the Super-Ego - the miserly fruits that the by now secular history of the analytical movement has made us taste. Naturally, I do not have a well-defined programme in my head, other than to commit myself to the political enterprise. I only need the few principles I have mentioned to you, and a few realities concerning the reform of the social bond between analysts. Did Freud have the whole of psychoanalysis in his head when he abandoned hypnosis (still, unfortunately, he did have the IPA in his head)?
        Dear Ettore, yes, let us abandon the hypnosis of psychotherapy. Let us abandon it to its destiny, and let us get back onto Freud's path. This is intellectually far more stimulating, and politically even more rewarding.

Bye bye,
Antonello.

        P.S.: I have no objections to publishing this correspondence in Arché, as long as you authorise me to publish it in Scibbolet 5 under the rubric of Spaziozero. But I would publish it with a few cuts, only to maintain the imprint of the contingency, which is always welcome in analysis, as it is the mark of the phallus.
        P.P.S.: Perhaps you are not aware that the one who is writing to you is an exemplary - in Italy perhaps more unique than rare - of those poor souls who, living under Lacan, took the passe with the then renowned EFP (I mean, before the dissolution). A failure amongst many, as this event was carried out entirely under the heading of identification with the symptom of Lacan, who, through the passe, asked nothing else from the world than the improper recognition of his teaching. I was forced by Lacan himself to attempt the enterprise (it might have been the lethal outcome of this that lead me not to institute a passe in my association).
        This long preamble is to introduce the question that, by surprise, a regularly randomly selected passeur asked me at the end the passe: 'By what may an analyst be recognised?' At that time, frazzled as I was by the interweaving of various and not very homogeneous transferences - on the analyst, on the passeur, on the master - I was unable to answer. This was so, not because I lacked a precise reply, but because I still lacked the moral courage to offer one that was my own. Twenty years later, I have granted myself that courage, building it piece by piece. Today I would say that an analyst could be recognised by the fact that he attempts the impossible. As with all good tests, this condition is obviously necessary but not sufficient: I know good philosophers who attempt the impossible, but they are not analysts. Needless to say, I am happy to work with them. Doubly needless to say, amongst them, one could not find a single psychotherapist, even if one paid in gold.

(1) Original text: 'benessere'. In Italian, 'Societá del benessere' means 'a healthy-and-wealthy society'.
(2) In relation to this, see Franco Baldini's reply.
(3) Institute for Permanent Theoretical Formation.

From Perrella to Sciacchitano
Padua, 24th September 1997

Dear Antonello,
        I totally agree with you that our correspondence has not ended yet, although I do think that we are finding ourselves on less and less distant positions. Naturally, I have nothing against publishing our letter in Scibbolet too, although this raises only a little doubt for me: why publish the same text more than once? Would it not be precisely because the readers of one journal do not read the others? And is this separation (everyone for himself and no one for all) not one of the problems that Spaziozero should resolve? What I am saying is this: would it not be better if the readers of Scibbolet also read Arché, and if the readers of Arché also read Scibbolet? In any case, we shall do as you wish. Could you let me have an edited copy of your letters? I shall let you have one of mine, too, and then we can put them together. If the correspondence continues beyond its publication, we should continue to publish it as a series - like a romance of the eighteen hundreds…
        But I come to the point. I think that we have really come to the crux of the matter. You write: unless it takes a political position, Spaziozero will soon disappear. Of this I am certain. From what I can gather, it would seem that my initial letter has raised negative responses among some in the movement. Unfortunately, unlike yours, these have not been explicitly formulated.
        With regard to intolerance and cowardice, in reality, I think that all those who have subscribed to Spaziozero (whose number, from what I hear from Mauro Santacatterina, has recently dramatically decreased) are neither cowards nor intolerant, for the simple reason that they did subscribe to it. I never thought or said otherwise. Nevertheless, like everyone else, we also have our own incoherencies, contradictions and even sins, and I do think that it is vital for each one of us to know, or at least to suspect, which are his or her own. If I may express something about this, contrary to what you might have thought, in my life I have always felt a real horror for all that is political. Of course, this depends also on what we mean by 'political'.         In any case, I am not a political agitator of the masses, and I should also add that I have no instinctual sympathy whatsoever for the masses themselves. On the one hand, I believe that this is a virtue, and, on the other, a defect that I struggle to correct.
In any case, if Spaziozero is to become a true movement of psychoanalytic politics, it is vital that a nucleus of positive theses emerges from within it. Not in the sense of positive rights, but in the sense that we cannot limit ourselves to speak about what we do not want, unless, having done so, we are unable to say what it is that we do want and propose. From this point of view, there are different positions (not only two, as you think perhaps too optimistically). What is more, often, the same people hold alternatively different positions. This problem seems to me a serious one, because it is not only so for those who concern themselves with psychoanalysis, but for everyone (and, I am afraid, with only very few exceptions).
        I continue to believe that it is neither right, nor correct to rely on psychoanalysis as on something that automatically guarantees a proper ethical and political position for those who practise it. This seems to me an ideological illusion that, under a coating of Freudian or Lacanian paint, can let through any sort of rubbish. Given that such a coating has been produced several times, and in several forms, throughout the history of psychoanalysis, I really think it is high time to turn the page and admit, with some humility, that the word 'psychoanalysis' guarantees nothing at all to anyone. I believe that if my position on this triggers truly phobic reactions in some of our colleagues, it is because to accept it would also mean to accept a disorientating narcissistic fall. One would imagine that psychoanalysts should be used to such a fall. But I think that - if they did occur in analysis (and only those who have undertaken one may know whether that has happen) - later on, their narcissistic falls become over compensated by a sort of psychoanalytic purism that produces beautiful souls, but, also, hides much ignorance and conformism. I want nothing to do with all this, as I think neither do you and many others. Why surrender, then, instead of trying to reveal what each one of us thinks about the formation of analysts and the meaning that analytical practice has today? Is clarity not a much better compensation than the delirium of omnipotence?
        So, with regard to intolerant people, of course they must be tolerated. But intolerance itself must not, because, otherwise, we would find ourselves precisely in that situation that you rightly describe as State psychotherapy - a danger from which we are not rescued by using a magic word like 'psychoanalysis'. And it is up to all of us not to get to this point. All of us who? Us analysts? If I were to trust this term, I would have to trust, also, people who have assumed diametrically opposite positions to the one that I believe should be that of a psychoanalyst. Can we, instead, trust the position of those who, stubbornly, continue to attempt the impossible, as you wrote (and, indeed, such stubbornness is not exclusive to analysts)? I have no problems with accepting a philosopher as a companion on my journey, nor would I refuse the companionship of anyone else. Therefore, I would not refuse, either, those who define themselves as psychotherapists. The fact is that the problem that Spaziozero is facing is not only a psychoanalytic one; it is also a complexly social and political one. If we were to forget this, we would completely miss our aim and Spaziozero would come to an end within a few weeks. What the hell, I am not tolerant and liberal because I am an analyst; I am an analyst because I am tolerant and liberal. I believe that those who were Maoists ahead of becoming analysts could not but conceive of psychoanalysis than in totalitarian terms - unless they underwent a complete metanoia, that is, a 'conversion', which, as the Greek word indicates, in reality is a total mutation of intellect. It is this mutation that we must produce with psychoanalysis and whatever other instruments that are at our disposal - it is precisely this effect, I think, that you call 'reform of the intellect'. Each one of us has his own Maoism in its closet, as we would say of a skeleton.  To become free of it - should one wish to do so - is not at all easy; but, unless one decides to do so, it is even totally impossible.
        This is why, dear Antonello, I really do not think that I am 'a restless shadow' that wanders around the supporters of psychotherapy. First of all, because psychotherapy matters to me only as any other practice that is freely chosen by anyone (that is, for a reason of general principle, and nothing else. I would defend in the same way carpenters, or Artic explorers). Secondly, like everyone else, I am not a ghost but a flesh and blood guy.
        Finally, I hope that the study-day in Padua will help us clarify some ideas in Spaziozero. This is why I think it would be better not to invite speakers, but, instead, really confront each other - even a little aggressively should it become necessary - about the crucial points, the formulation of which will enable our Movement to begin to truly exist (and not only on paper or computer).

In friendship,
Ettore

From Sciacchitano to Perrella
Milan, 27th September 1997

Dear Ettore,
        I know you are very engaged with Spaziozero, but I take advantage of your delayed reply to request from you a consultation on Paul. Don't be surprised. As you may not imagine, I have had a Catholic upbringing. The apex of my religious formation, which today is the basis of my atheism, is that faith is born out of charity. Otherwise said, for me, God is unconscious, but is also an evident effect of the social relation. With regard to this, I am writing to ask you for a good translation from Greek of Corinthians I, 13, 13. The German and French versions are a little different from each other. The Bible de Jérusalem says: 'La foi, l'espérance et la charité demeurent tous les trois, mais la plus grande d'entre elles, c'est la charité'. More romantically, the Einheitsübersetzung translates: 'Fürjetzt bleiben Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe (sic), diese drei; docham größten unter ihnen ist die Liebe'.
        I think that this citation by Paul is pertinent, and very relevant, to our debate. Psychoanalysis makes its apparition (in the sense of an Epiphany), in a way that can be judged, in the social bond between analysts and non-analysts. Therefore, a politics of psychoanalysis cannot act correctly, unless it passes through the renewal of the social bond between us - the Greeks' metanoia. If one wishes to reform psychoanalysis, this bond, too, is in need of reformation. The rest - commissions, laws, Ministerial departments - is needed, but is secondary to the politics of psychoanalysis. To say it with Freud, the primary process remains the social bond between us. I say this because it seems to me that, among us, the interest in the social bond has been relegated to a secondary plane, and, instead, the false question about psychotherapeutic formation has been brought to the most prominent plane. Therefore, whatever remains of my Catholic formation becomes disquieted.
        I wait for your opinion and wish you a good weekend,
Antonello

From Perrella to Sciacchitano
Padua, 29th September 1997

Dear Antonello,
        Your letter dated 27th September makes me think that, when you wrote it, you had not received my reply of the 24th, which I had also sent to you. I shall not spend much time talking about yesterday's meeting of the Council of Spaziozero. It went very well, as I imagine Contardi will have already told you. In any case, the important aspect is that the turn - suggested by you in your 'Pauline' letter, and by me in my intervention at this meeting - seems a worthwhile attempt to everyone. Spaziozero must become a truly political movement, and, for this to happen, I think we need to deal with the points on which our opinions diverge - because, as all divergent things, although divergent these are also convergent.
        Galli also wants to publish our correspondence in Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane… Now we must really render our letters publishable… Sort yours out and I shall also do the same with mine. Soon, I will send my text on the 'One' to Rovatti (1).
        Now, let's come to St Paul. I did not have a Catholic upbringing, which gives me the option of thinking that I am not an atheist. Literally translated, the text you have sent me sounds like this: 'But for now [nynì] there remains [ménei] fedelity, hope, and love [agápe], these three: but the greatest among these is love'. Some linguistic considerations: nynì is the time of waiting for revelation (apokálypsis), thanks to which it will be possible to see the divine directly. It is no longer for speculum in aenigmate. It is the present for the hopeful and anticipating waiting of revelation. The anticipation of revelation has the triple form of that which remains - triply insisting (the three 'theological virtues'). The Greek pístis, as the Latin fides, means fidelity before meaning faith. Belief has nothing to do with it. What it has to do with is fidelity to the alliance, that is to say, to the Word and to Logos, which is its initiator. Hope is the openness to the advent of revelation (that is, of the return of Logos in judgement), whereas agape is most certainly love. 'Charity' is a completely nonsensical translation. In Greece, even today, to say 'I love you' to a lover one says s'agapò. The three virtues have a verb in the singular tense, which could also be sustained in anticipation by the neutral plural ('these three things'). Grammatically, however, this seems to me sustained by each one of these three, as if all three were only one thing (that is why, earlier, I made reference to their triadic relation).
        I hope that these hurried notes are helpful. In any case, I welcome your Catholic upbringing. At last I have found someone who has understood that the problem of psychoanalytic transmission can only be resolved on the higher plane of love. This plane is truly so high that we all would rather take it as a metaphor, whereas it is the very matter of our lives. 

See you soon,
Ettore

(1) Italian philosopher and editor of out-out. Head of the philosophy department at the University of Trieste. Has an interest in the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. Widely published in Italian.

Reply from Franco Baldini
Milan, 2nd December 1998

        In the series of letters exchanged between Antonello Sciacchitano and Ettore Parella, widely published in the journals Scibbolet and Arché, as well as on the web, Sciacchitano makes erroneous references to me on two occasions.
        In his letter dated 2nd July 1997, Sciacchitano writes:

'The thesis A (to which, I think, Baldini also subscribes) holds that the State cannot regulate psychotherapy just as it cannot regulate any other process of subjective formation, which has to occur in full freedom.'

        I have never held this view but, rather, the exact opposite one, and I have explained this on several public occasions at which Sciacchitano was present. In synthesis: I believe that the State has the right to norm all that it wants, but it should not do so by throwing upside down consolidated traditions and principles of doctrine. If the State wishes to norm psychoanalysis it should norm psychoanalysis, not something else that it believes to be psychoanalysis. Having said this, I believe that the best thing for psychoanalysts would be to regulate themselves.
        In his letter dated 22nd September 1997, Sciacchitano again writes:

'Cold and mechanical, the vegetative germinates in Baldini, who wants a scientific psychoanalysis that is without a subject, teachable in some private university that is run by a rector.'

        First, I note that whilst in his letter dated 29th July I emerged as a defender of subjective rights, by the 22nd September I have already become someone who would like to abolish these. I also wish to underline that to define 'cold and mechanical' the vegetative soul (it would be best to say 'the vegetative part - mòrion - of the soul'), indicates a lack of knowledge about Aristotle.
        Most of all, I firmly object to the equation: science = abolition of the subject. I have explained several times (also, in private, to Sciacchitano) that at least since the '20s - with the turn of quantum physics - science absolutely no longer does away with the subject, it no longer attempts to abolish it. As a Freudian analyst and as a scientist, I know full well that the subject cannot be abolished, but I also know that this is not an obstacle to the constitution of a scientific objectivity. Today's scientific objectivities are all constituted in a way that could be defined as 'non-transcendentalist' - if Sciacchitano knows what I am talking about. That is, far from denying the subject, scientific objectivities themselves are nothing else but forms of subjectivities. Needless to say, this too is not cold and mechanical.
        The project of a psychoanalytic institute - which I have always suggested only as one possible solution of the problem of analytical formation - was not born out of my own mind, but goes right back to Sigmund Freud. The suggestion that I am manoeuvring to bring about for myself the possibility to take up a position as Rector is one that aims at implying that my involvement in all of this is moved by some occult ambition for power. That is, it suggests that, unlike Freud, I do not support the scientific value of psychoanalysis because I have a strong conviction and on the basis of some well founded arguments, but, rather, only in order to obtain academic power. The whole of my life demonstrates that this is quite to the contrary, and all those who know me even a little bit can testify to this.
        I think that in private anyone has the right to manifest their opinions - even in 'Dionysian' ways - but in public tones and manners should be different.

Franco Baldini

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