(317) I speak without the slightest hope – specifically of making myself understood. I know that I do so – by adding to it what it entails of the unconscious.

This is my advantage over the man who thinks and does not realise that, to start with, he speaks. An advantage which I solely owe to my experience.

For in the interval between speech that he misrecognizes [méconnait] and what he believes makes ‘thinking’, man gets muddled [l’homme s’embrouille], which is no encouragement to him.

Thus, man thinks stupidly [débile] and all the more stupidly in that he rages … precisely because he gets muddled.

There is the problem of the School. This is no mystery. So I too orient myself in it, and none too early.

This problem is being demonstrated as such by having a solution: this is the dis-, the dissolution.

To be understood as ‘of the Association’ which gives that School a juridical status.

The fact that it is sufficient for one to leave it to free all the other ones, this is, in my Borromean knot, true for each one, it ought to be up to me to do it in my School.

I am resolved to do it since, if I did not put myself in the way, it would function as the reverse of my reason for founding it.

Namely for a work, I said it – which, in the field opened up by Freud, restores the sharp-edged ploughshare [soc] of its truth – which brings the original praxis that he instituted under the name of psychoanalysis, back to the duty that rests with it in our world – which, through an assiduous critique, denounces in it the deviations and compromises that dampen its progress whilst degrading its use. An objective that I maintain.

This is why I am dissolving it. And I don’t complain about the so-called “members of the Freudian School” – rather, I thank them for having been (318) taught by them, in relation to which I failed – that is, when I got myself muddled [je me suis embrouillé] .

This teaching is precious to me. I put it to good use.

In other words, I per-severe. And I call to an association once again those who, this January 1980, want to continue with Lacan.

Let them make themselves known to me immediately by written candidacy. Within ten days, in order to cut short the prevailing stupidity, I will publish those first adherents to whom I have agreed, as committed to an ‘‘assiduous critique” of what, in terms of “deviations and compromises” the FSP has contributed to fuel.

By demonstrating in act that it will not depend on them whether my School be an institution as a result of a consolidated group effect, to the detriment of the effect of discourse expected from experience when it is Freudian, one knows the cost that ensued after Freud permitted the psychoanalytic group to prevail over the discourse and become a Church.

The International, since such is its name, is reduced to the symptom that it is, it is the symptom that Freud expected it would be. But it is not that that gives it weight. It is the Church, the true one, which supports Marxism in so far as it gives it new blood … from a renewed meaning. Why not psychoanalysis when it veers towards meaning?

I am not saying that out of vain mockery [persiflage]. The stability of religion stems from the fact meaning is always religious.

Whence my obstinacy on my path of mathemes – which does not prevent anything but bears witness to what would be needed to bring the analyst up to speed with his function.

If I per-severe [père-sévère] it is because when the experience is completed it calls for a compensatory counter-experience.

I don’t need a lot of people. And there are people I don’t need.

I leave them stranded so that they may show what they are able to do, aside from burden me and turn to water a teaching in which everything is weighed.

Will those whom I admit with me do any better? At least, they will be able to take advantage of the fact I am giving them the opportunity to do so.

(319) The Directorate of the FSP, as I composed it, will expedite the so-called ‘current’ affairs that are still dragging on, until an Assembly, called ‘extraordinary’ for it will be the last one, convened in due time in conformity with the law, proceeds to the devolution of its assets, as appraised by the treasurers.

Guitrancourt, January 5, 1980

Translated by Chantal Degril