60 ". . . the signification of castration in fact takes on its (clinically manifest ) full weight as far as the formation of symptoms is concerned, only on the basis of its discovery as castration of the mother" (Ecrits (E), p. 282), that is, her lack of a penis and not of a clitoris. "The fact that the phallus is a signifier means that it is in the place of the Other that the subject has access to it. But since this signifier is only veiled, as the ratio of the Other's desire, it is this desire of the Other as such that the subject must recognize . . . If the desire of the mother is the phallus, the child wishes to be the phallus in order to satisfy that desire . . . Clinical experience has shown us that this test of the desire of the Other is decisive not in the sense that the subject learns by it whether or not he has a real phallus, but in the sense that he learns that the mother does not have it . . . in effect, the man finds satisfaction for his demand for love in the relation with the woman, in as much as the signifier of the phallus constitutes her as giving in love what she does not have..." Ecrits (E), pp.282-90 passim .
I have italicized "clinically manifest " and "clinical experience has shown " without having the slightest suspicion conceming the truth of these statements. Rather, in order to examine all the bearings of a situation of psychoanalysis in XXXX.
"What she does not have" . . . "bequeaths in that she has never had it": recall that "Woman" and the Queen are in question here: the proper place orienting the proper course of the letter, its "destination," what it "means," which is deciphered on the basis of a situation that theorizes what "clinical experience shows us."
This situation (a theoretical discourse and an institution built upon a phase of the male child's experience and the corresponding sexual theory) supports, for both Bonaparte and Lacan, the interpretation of "The Purloined Letter." This interpretation corresponds rigorously, and here there is no infidelity of the legatees to the description given by Freud in the propositions that were debated during the "quarrel" just mentioned. As a reminder: ". . . the main characteristic of this 'infantile genital organization' is its difference from the final genital organization of the adult. The fact is that, for both sexes, only one genital, namely the male one, comes into account. What is present, therefore, is not a primacy of the genitals, but a primacy of the phallus .
"Unfortunately we can describe this state of things only as it affects the male child; the corresponding processes in the little girl are not known to us . . . [Little boys] disavow the fact [of the absence of a penis] and believe that they do see a penis, all the same. They gloss over the contradiction between observation and preconception by telling themselves that the penis is still small and will grow bigger presently; and they then slowly come to the emotionally significant conclusion that after all the penis had at least been there before and been taken away afterwards. The lack of a penis is regarded as a result of castration, and so now the child is faced with the task of coming to terms with castration in relation to himself. The further developments are too well known generally to make it necessary to recapitulate them here. But it seems to me that the significance of the castration complex can only be rightly appreciated if its origin in the phase of phallic primacy is also taken into account . . . At the . . . stage of infantile genital organization . . . maleness exists, but not femaleness. The antithesis here is between having a male genital and being castrated ." "The Infantile Genital Organization" (1923), SE 19, pp. 142-45.
One might be tempted to say: Freud, like those who follow him here, is only describing the necessity of phallogocentrism, only explaining its effects, which are as obvious as they are massive. Phallogocentrism is neither an accident nor a speculative error that can be imputed to any given theoretician. It is an old and enormous root that must also be accounted for. Thus, one can describe it, as one describes an object or an itinerary, without having the description participate in that whose recognition it operates. Certainly. But this hypothesis, which then would have to be extended to cover all the texts of tradition, encounters in these texts, as it does in Freud, and as it does in those of his heirs who on this question wish to transform no part of his legacy, a strictly determinable limit: the description is a "participant" when it induces a practice, an ethics, and an institution. and therefore a politics tha insure the truth of the tradition Then, it is no longer only a question of knowing, showing, and explaining, but of remaining. And of reproducing. Lacan declares his ethico-institutional discourse: the motifs of authenticity, of full speech, of sworn faith, and of the ''signifying convention" show this adequately. "Analysis can have for its goal only the advent of a true speech and the realization by the subject of his history in his relation to a future (Ecrits (E). p. 88). "Just before the summits of the path on which I will place its reading [that of the work of Freud], before considering transference then identification, then anxiety, it is not by accident, and no one would think of this, that this year, the fourth before my seminar at Sainte-Anne is to end, I have thought it necessary to assure ourselves of the ethics of psychoanalysis.
"It seems in effect that we risked forgetting in the field in which we function that an ethics is its very principle, and that henceforth, no matter what he might say to himself, and equally well without my own statements, about the end of man, it is with a formation that can be qualified as human that our principle torment is concerned.
"Every human formation has as its essence. and not for accidental purposes, the restraining of pleasure" (Discours de clôture des Journées sur les psychoses chez l'enfant , in Recherches , special issue Enfance aliénée , December l 1, 1968. pp. 145-46).