LAPLANCHE: Problématiques VI: L'Après-coup

--November 28, 1989

The course I am resuming today and which is one of the three courses required for the DEA, has its specificities and its difficulties. In my opinion, a DEA course must present the latest research because where would psychoanalytic research be taught if not at the university?Therefore, it is not an introductory course (propédeutique) and, for those of you who might not have, say, adequate notions, you will not find here an abc on the subject or only incidentally. It is a kind of template or sample of my research which will not necessarily coincide with your own interests or with your thesis topic. It is a way to present personal ideas. On the other hand, this research takes place in a trend which I am obliged to consider as known. Some among you are former auditors, others are new; every year there are new auditors of the DEA which present the problem of an audience more or less informed, catching the train on the way, concerning a (train) of thought. How then to conciliate in a course of this type, my ambition to be at the forefront of ongoing research, to elaborate and access to elementary concepts? Three issues have to be considered: on the one hand, you will see, I hope, that my discourse is always clear, that occasionally I give references and possible explanations, that I am ready, when there is time, at the end rather or at

the beginning of the next session, to answer questions, requests for clarifications, even during my presentation, without interrupting it. Furthermore, for those who wish to understand better what I am doing here, to acquire a minimum of elements of my thinking and for what will be treated this year, some articles from Language of Psychoanalysis, already old, and New Foundation for Psychoanalysis, published two years ago and which is my starting point for my current developments.

A third consideration arises from the topic itself; it has to do with my theme, i.e. Time, the time of thought; the work of thought, I conceive it like any type of work, not as a train flying like the arrow of time-- I shall return several times to this reference to thought as "an arrow of time." Well, a train of thought doesn't run in a straight line. It follows a movement which I call "a spiral" and which in fact if a propeller.

Which means that a human being's entire life, and especially the movement of thought is neither linear, continuously leaving a point to jump to another, or circular, that is to say, forced to repeat endlessly the same sequences. The movement of a spiral continuously moves away from a pole but at the same time it is brought to go over the same themes, hoping that it is at another level.

All this to say that nothing is absolutely new in what I have to offer and that I am led like everyone to repeat

myself, not to say rediscover with some surprise what I may have said but in a totally different way.

I asked to try to familiarize yourself with Nouveau fondements pour la psychanalyse which develops what I call "the theory of generalized seduction," and from which my developments and and reflection that might also be called "elements for a philosophy of time." Elements for a philosophy of time based on "the theory of generalized (universal) seduction." In you want, in German, they are Bausteine, "building stones for a philosophy of time."

Why time, and why time in relation to the "theory of universal seduction"? Because to my mind, there is an intimate link between them. The theory of universal seduction is a thought of time. It is a thought, allow me this neologism, translator of time. Thus, it opens, it should lead to a new thought , a new philosophy of time. Here, when I speak of time, it is essentially of individual human time, framed of course by types of time, cosmological time, biological time, for example, not to say historical time. It is human time, of individual human beings, temporizing of human being, I am talking about. Human beings play for time, in the sense one finds in Heidegger in the same domain of questions as Heidegger's, but from an entirely different perspective.

Initially, I had proposed as a general title for the course this year, "Time and the other."1 A title is suggested, proposed ahead , and it works or doesn't work. What I mean to say is to propose it as a thesis even I do not develop more it right now. Human beings play for time, I might say, temporize themselves,because, and insofar as--it is in an relation to the other. A philosophy of time of psychoanalytic origin? must lead to (end up) this relation to the other, the other, of course of seduction, the other who, from the outset, injects to human beings its enigmatic messages. This can be stated differently. The drive of human beings playing for time, it's the primal relation to the other. To be clear, it is not an abstract other. Let's say that the issue of the Other with a big O, according to Lacan, is completely beside the point. To be precise, in the seduction theory, it is the "other,"2 what the adult is for the child, an "other" that may be called "transcendent" insofar as it yields enigmatic messages-- enigmatic for the receiver and the sender.

Thus, this thesis of "the time of the other" is highlighted as something that to be clarified but which I will deal with from the outset.

My development, more specific, within the frame of this interrogation about time, will concern--here too it is a

1 Later on, I found the same title in one of Levinas's small books, but the ideas are very different. To avoid a problem of anteriority, I dropped that title.

2 Saying the "Other with a big A" never made sense to me.

movement in the shape of a spiral--something I have discussed many times but which I want to reexamine and sharpen, the concept of "après-coup." The possible title would be: The Nachträglichkeit in the "après-coup."

What do I mean by that? Certainly, it is not a play on words for the sake of it. "Après-coup" is the current French translation adopted for Nachträglichkeit. Not what would be tautological in French "l'après-coup dans l'après-coup," but Freud's N... in the move the "après-coup." This title seeks to point out two things: the first thing is that the history of the concept itself of N..., that is to say that the entire history of the concept, is itself a history in the "après-coup." It is inserted in multiple ways in the après-coup. In other words, since the beginning with Freud to date, the history of N... Is the best example of N... . In a very Hegelian formula, Freud once stated that "the example is the thing itself." So, the history of the N... concept is animated and inscribed ? With N... Itself, as you will see during this course's development.

On the other hand, my title is in two languages. Where I could have said, "The après-coup within the Après-coup," I say "N... Within the Après-coup." This use of two languages explains the essential function of translation in this history of N... . The history of N... Is inseparable from its translative destiny, of its translations; not only the translation of the term but that of its concept.

To state that the N... Is a Freudian concept, one must put quotes around "concept" as well as "Freudian." Quotes around concept because it is a concept which like all great concepts reveals itself only in its history, hence this famous après-coup. What about the fact that it is Freudian? It is pre-Freudian and largely post-freudian insofar as we, according to various directions, use? after the fact of this freudian concept. However, for Freud, in his own work, the n... , the N... , is entirely integrated in a complicated history; a history with eclipses, fadings, with erasures and returns (resurgences) which in a first move can be treated as parallel to the resurgences ? and eclipses of the seduction theory itself. Although, as you will see, when one takes a closer look, it is not that simple. We'll try to take a closer look.

In any case, speaking of a major eclipse, a really big one, a major erasure of N... , there is the one which targets the concept in Freud's complete works and especially in the indexes, i.e. The Gesammelte Werke, which are the complete works in German, and especially the indexes to vol. I, II, ND III, and also in the general index which is very weak. The English edition, the Standard Edition, is no better served. And this is due to one major point: concepts can be indexed only if they have been identified in the thought. The new French edition, that of OEuvres Complètes (OCFP) is intended to correct such gaps, which at the outset implies a study and an interpretation of

conceptual ensembles which a simple computer search or selection of terms cannot replace.

1. Having concluded this parenthesis, I return to this kind of eclipse, or scotomization of the n... And of the N... In the indexes, the German ones included. However this scotomization3 cannot be due to the editors. It is Freud's doing, not positive but negative, who without eliminating the concept, did nothing to underline it. I imagine that if Freud had been asked to plan the index of his concepts for his Complete Works, N... Would have been listed far behind others, at least during the last period of his thought. I am told that a correspondence with Ferenczi on this point --I would like to know for sure but I do not have it on hand-- that is to say a questioning of Ferenczi on l'après-coup.

In any case, the first, the large "après-coup" of N... , is the après-coup in France. It is an après-coup which is at the same time an après-coup of translation, and this is very significant. And the author of this inaugural is Lacan who, as he often does, raise an essential point, with the sureness of his coup d'oeil. This has to do with his "Rapport de Rome" which dates from--the problem of dates is interesting in a movement like this one which is historical, even if it is declaimed dialectically-- September 1953. That's not yesterday. The second scansion, still French, is the scansion due to Laplanche and Pontalis, 3 See Addiitonal citations from translator.

then Laplanche alone in a number of texts already 10 years after 1953: the text by Lalanche and Pontalis on Les Fantasmes originaires (1964), the Language of Psychoanalysis with the article about "L'Après-coup," and many articles which refer to it (1967) and then Vie et mort en psychanalyse (1970), Laplanche and Pontalis conceptual work--this après-coup in Laplanche and Pontalis, is something very different from Lacan's--, it is the reintroduction of n in its conceptual context which might be called "nursing," "primal" that is to say the re-insertion of n... In the seduction theory which, in final analysis, Lacan never does.

All the same, that needs to be mentioned. I was saying a moment ago that the index of the Gesammelte Werke is poor; it dates from 1968 (the German edition of the Complete Works dates from 1940-1952). You can see that Lacan's "Rapport de Rome" any more than the articles by Laplanche and Pontalis had any influence on the international movement of thought, on the way Freud was perceived. It is not completely wrong to say that the return to Freud was a return which was French.

Now (at this point) I will attempt to recall and attempt to comment on this text by Lacan which is most interesting because of everything he sees, everything he proposes and also by what might be objectionable. It is a text about

truth, truth in anamnesis,4 on the historical truth of the patient and, of course, on the truth as it is revealed in the patient history and in his treatment. It is on pages 256-257 in Lacan's Ecrits in the first edition, in any case it is in "Fonctions de la parole..." for those who have different editions.You'll see the n..., "après-coup," in what follows in the text. I will get to this passage right away and the problem of translation.

The condition of continuity in anamnesis where Freud measures the cure's integrity has nothing to do with the bergsonian myth of a restoration of continuity[...]." [Lacan never was very bergsonian quite rightly occasionally, unfairly in other times; in any case, at that time, in France,It was obligatory (de rigueur) to be violently anti-bergsonian; perhaps a little less today]. "Let's be categorical. In psychoanalytic anamnesis, it is not an issue of reality but of truth. Because it is the effect of a parole pleine to reorder past contingencies by giving them the meaning of necessities to come, such as they are constituted by the small amount of freedom in which the subject makes them present." Of course, this text is very well put together, since Heidegger's three "temporal ecstasies": past, present, future are /included/ in it. It is a text closely related to heideggerian thought and you will 4. .anamnesis |ˌanəmˈnēsis| :noun ( pl. -ses |-sēz|)recollection, in particular• the remembering of things from a supposed previous existence (often used with reference to Platonic philosophy).• Medicine a patient's account of a medical history.• Christian Church the part of the Eucharist in which the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ are recalled.ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Greek anamnēsis ʻremembrance.ʼ [translator addition]

appreciate the wit of the following: "to reorder the past contingencies by giving them the meaning of the necessities to come as constituted by the little freedom the subject makes them present. Fine, the the sequence is well put together but what is amusing is the inversion Lacan imposes to the terms past and future in that sense that contigency, which usually is on the side of the future is put here onthe side of the past while the future is on the side of necessity. I utter the name of Heidegger. The heideggerian proximity is strongly felt here; "necessity" to come being almost, for Heidegger, as you know, "being for death." And the past being considered not necessary but subject to revisions.

The development (sequence) concerns "The Wolfman," and it's there that Lalcan will discover the n... . I am reading:"The meanders of the research Freud pursues in the account of the "Wolfman" case confirm these statements to find in their full significance. Freud demands a complete objectification of the proof, as long as the primitive scene needs to be dated. " Those of you who have read "The Wolfman" know that indeed one of Freud's objectives is the dating of the famous primitive scene give or take a month, Eventually a year. What I mean is that Freud is often more definite about the year than the month since the month can be determined but off by a year. It is certain that a scene takes place at Christmas, this is almost certain to the day, but one is certain about the year because Christmas is repeated

every year. It is indeed the concern for the day that you will find in the text of "The Wolfman." which is now faithfully translated in the vol. XIII of the OEuvres Complètes. I quote Lacan again: Freud requires a total objectification of the proof as long as it is a matter of dating the primitive scene but "he assumes without further explanation all the re-subjectivations of the event that he deems necessary to explain its effects at every point where the subject restructures itself [note the terms of re-subjectivation and re-structuration], that is to say as many re-structuration of the event which act as he expresses himself: n... , après-coup."

Thus you have introduced, discovered in Freud, rediscovered after Freud who without doubt rediscovers it in some way, rediscovered in Freud by Lacan the n... which we haven't changed, that of the "après-coup," and that in The Wolfman. Lacan uses a late text (1917), in comparison to texts we shall soon deal with, this 1917 text itself being situated in the n... , in the après-coup of Freudian thought Lacan's note which gives the reference to the section says this: "Weak translation of the term." He considers "après-coup" a weak translation of n... ;a translation that lacks vigor, which perhaps fails to incorporate the entire n... I do not agree. I'll return to this point later.

I go on. "Even more, with a daring that borders casualness, he claims as legitimate to drop [delete, elide]

in the analysis of the process of intervals of time where the event remains dormant for the subject." That's a Lacan interpretation. Check the text I am referring to. It is true, in this story, Freud is more interested to the turning moments than to the latency intervals, the n... Being precisely made up of eclipses and active moments. It is here, that Lacan refers explicit to his article "Logical time and the assertion of anticipated certainty," published in the same collection of articles, to emphasize perhaps unduly, "the decision to conclude" at the expense of that which, for us, properly pertains to analysis: "the time to understand." In this, he remains very close to Heidegger and of what the latter calls "the resolved decision." And Lacan concludes with these words: "It is indeed this assumption by the subject of his history insofar as it is constituted by the discourse (parole?) addressed to the other which constitutes the basis of the new method to which Freud gives the name of psychoanalysis." So it is "the discourse addressed to the other," what a moment ago he called la parole pleine, which enables the subject to reconstitute , to reorder in moments of meditation, of conclusion, of reordering, past contingencies. The terms are questionable. A philosophy that might be called--without distorting the meaning of the words--hermeneutics, inspired by Heidegger but which Ricoeur would not repudiate, even in his most recent developments about "time and narrative." A philosophy in which la parole (language) , which might be expected with Lacan's "Rome report," plays a major role; but note, la parole addressed

to the other, and not la parole addressed by the other. (Nothing here about the enigmatic signifier). Certainly, the idea of heterogeneous time is crucial, essential. It's an idea which, in some way, the notion like that of the spiral, is not unrelated since there is the concept of time that is not linear but cyclical, with eclipses and strong moments and a thought which plays between a past considered as factuality, contingency, and a meaning to assign to this past a meaning to be retroactively constructed, a meaning used to reorder a past considered as factuality. This is not all of the Lacanian thought about historicity, and it is not either, I want to emphasize it, all of Freud, as I said a moment ago. Here, Lacan targets a single moment of freudian thought, the moment of "The Wolfman." He never paid enough attention, in my opinion, to the texts of 1895-97, the first Freudian texts. Of course, he punctually the "Letters to Fliess," the "Project," etc. But, at the moment when Pontalis and I were beginning, in Lacan, there is a lack of a simple knowledge (and a fortiori a reflection) of the seduction theory. At first glance, the seduction theory is missing in Lacan's approach to Freud, and to my mind it is a major gap. It is a gap which, in this text, in the end, situates the dilemma in the same way it would be placed in a "horrible débat" [nasty debate]. between an hermeneutist on the one side and a scientist on the other.5

5 Jean Laplanche, "L'interpétation entre déterminisme et herméneutique," in La Révolution copernicienne inachevée (Paris: Aubier, 1992), pp 385-415.

Is there a necessity of the past and contingency of the future, hence is there an absolute determinism in individual history? Inversely, does the future restructure contingencies of the past completely? In a way, such a text falls into an impasse (dead end) which I will try to manipulate in different directions during this development about n... . A dead end in the dilemma between brute reality and the purely retroactive interpretation (finally).Feud's n... , I am now getting to it, does he offer a solution or not? I'll begin by talking about the words. Of course I am not going to stop with that. This is not a German class. But I am obliged to deal with the few words on the board which weight a lot in this story. German words, I wrote some of them, like most German words are very rich [in meaning] derived from the same root. To say that German is richer than French is a very dubious way to rhapsodize. Sometimes it is richer, sometimes it is poorer. Often German has some difficulty capturing a nuance from the French and inversely: but this is not the problem. Certainly German allows derivations from the same root which French authorizes with much more difficulty.Our point of departure is the verb tragen which means to carry and which brings with it an idea of movement. Either a realistic movement or in the more special sense of still spatial but more metaphorical of "range". For ex. The range of a rifle or the reach of an idea. An idea that goes far, weittragend, (qui porte loin) a far reaching idea. Next, with the verb nachtragen, to the idea of range the prefix nach is added which means after and "next" but can

eventually mean "back." So much so that dictionaries record three meanings of the verb nachtragen. I hasten to add that, to my knowledge, the verb nachtragen is rare, never or rarely found in Freud. At least I never ran across it. Thus there are three recorded meanings (and we are lucky that there not more because it would be difficult to maintain a certain continuity in the translations). All three are constructed with a direct object--what one carries etwas tragen-- and a circumstantial complement of place or time, meaning backwards or posteriorly.

jemandem : to someone

etwas: something

nachtragen: to carry back/wards

Or to put it in more correct French: "to carry something behind someone."

Hence the three meanings: 1. The first is very literal; to carry something behind someone.The second and the third are m'ore 'complex' ' '

2. "to add, later on, something to something."It's the meaning of adding something in a book. To put an addendum. Thus, Freud's XIIIth volume of the Gesammelte Werke is called Nachtragsband, that is to say, "addenda volume"; articles which were published in the series but were added "après-coup."

Finally, the third meaning is interesting, "to carry something behind someone," "to hold a grudge against someone."

To simplify, If you don't mind keeping "the arrow of time" in mind (English philosophers say arrow of time), it goes from the past to the future, unlike the Seine which, under the Mirabeau bridge flows from the present to the past. You will notice that the n... games are most ambiguous. Undoubtedly, my resentment, my grudge moves inversely from the arrow (of time), hooking me to the past insult (abuse): however its source is definitely in the past. In the same way, in the addenda volume, these are indeed forgotten texts which are coming back from the past, but at the same time, although it does come later, their publication does modify their configuration of what was before. An additive retroactively modifies the ensemble of the texts where it is inserted.

And then we have the essential term n... Which at once adjective and adverb, and finally the substantive fairly rare, the concept of N... ! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! * *** *

Question from the audience:

--Why are you speaking of a philosophy of time?

Answer to be added later

-- December 12, 1989

I keep going, both recapitulative and après coup, about the n... . For a moment, I will simply continue about the words. So, next to the verb nachtragen there is the naträglich which is both adverb and adjective. At first glance, it can be translated by "subsequently," "later," "posteriorly"; dictionaries give "später," "späterfolgend," coming after, without apparently mentioning the the idea of turning back. I repeat this reference which I raised (gave) once and for all, the idea of the "arrow of time," we say, from the past to the future.

Freud often use the expression "nachträglicher Gehorsam" which means "obedience après coup," to the dead father, for example, to the Superego precisely as substitute to the father, etc. It might be interesting, I don't have the key, someone else may have it perhaps, to find out why Freud puts " around these words, as if it was an accepted borrowed expression. Borrowed from himself, I don't know, I don't think so. Perhaps borrowed from the field of "post-hypnotic suggestion." In post-hypnotic suggestion experiments, as you know, the subject under hypnosis is given an order and once awake, "he obeys après coup this order." Therefore, it is possible that nachträglicher Gehorsam comes from this technical vocabulary.

As a matter of fact, you can already see it, even in this expression, if "späterer Gehorsam" was translated like "später," subsequent obedience, a nuance would be lost.You realize that an subsequent obedience is not an obedience après coup. The après coup obedience supposed that the past be representified and inversely supposes that the subject replaces himself back in the past situation. Unlike a pure and simple "später" there is no idea of discontinuous time which we mentioned last time in connection with Lacan, a time with fits and starts, as the term "après-coup" says. Furthermore these "fits" (literally coup means blow) are carried as the verb "tragen" suggests in nachtragen." Therefore , a time with carried blows and inversely, interrupted by "latencies" (periods). Hence the interest of the French translation and not only of the French discovery; or more exactly the French discovery and the translation are one and only "hit" in this occurrence of the après-coup. The translation happened there as a developed (photographic sense) print? one might say, as a "proof of the stranger" to use this expression introduced with success by Antoine Berman with respect to translation.6 A thought which is tested by the stranger, I mean here, "the stranger" of Freud's thought, and inversely Freud's thought tested from "abroad"7 as it enters the French language, test which never occurs without some décalage, but also 6 Antoine Berman, L'épreuve de l'étranger... (Paris, Gallimard, 1984).

7 This seems to be the only meaning of étranger that works here.

without revelation since "Tragen," "to carry," is not exactly "the blow," hit (coup) of French.

Finally, you see the connection existing between these two terms; and that "après-coup" is not such a weak translation because "après-coup" in French like nachträglich in German, goes indissociably in both directions of the arrow of time: one can say that the scaffolding collapse "après-coup." You can see that we have said something else than the scaffolding collapsed subsequently. Similarly, "he recast (reshuffled) his book "après coup" means something else than he next recast his book. I understood "après coup" (afterward) what had happened: this event acquires "après coup" quite a different meaning. We are bound to stay with this problem of translation not only during this technical development about l'après coup but during the entire year.

In this issue between French and German, the only weakness of French maybe that it only has an adverb (or the adverbial locution) "après coup," and eventually the adjective because one can't really use "après coup" adverb in its adverbial form. Obedience "après coup" works very well. On the other hand, in German we have a substantive N... With a capital N of course and the suffix keit which is one of the possible modes in German to form substantives. Freud might have been able to say Das Nachträglichkeit, we have a derivation which implies that, let's say, an independent substantive, a concept even.

Does Freud make up this Nachträglichkeit or not? It's barely a question because it is perfectly acceptable to do it in German. Nevertheless, it is possible to find some attested forms for some words and others less so. Well, the Nachträglichkeit in Freud's sense is not attested in dictionaries, at last the more recent ones I was able to consult. On the other hand, occasionally the "Nachträglichkeit" is given in two very incidental meanings which you will see do not have at all the Freudian meaning: the sense of Verspätung, delay, and the sense of "nachtragendes Wesen," which can be translated as someone who "holds grudges." You recall that nachtragen may also mean "to hold grudges" which is after is not without interest for my argument.

At this point, to translate Nachträglichkeit, French will have to either under-translate, as we say, or to over-translate.Under-translating, if it only says "l'après-coup," since it would not differentiate between das Nachträgliche and die Nachträglichkeit or to add something to "après-coup," and in so doing to over-translate. Even if I occasionally attempted to invent neologisms, one cannot make up such barbaric term as "après-coup-ité." One is therefore compelled to using a substantive, and there it becomes somewhat arbitrary. At some point for Freud's OEuvres Complètes, I had used "the après-coup effect" and not "the effect of après-coup." One might chose the phenomenon, the process, terms which of course are not in the keit of Nachträglichkeit or still the "après-coup

factor." Actually, Freud uses somewhere the term moment: "Moment of Nachträglichkeit, i.e. factor of the après-coup."

In any case, with respect to such problems which pertain to the daily task, the translator's "cuisine," French forced out a major concept and it is the translator who was the first, even before the German reader, who was able to follow in the genesis of this emerging concept in the Freudian text (precisely in its après-coup), by giving it(endowing it with)a unique term. What about English? We also have to discuss this question, because it is important, for the history of the psychoanalytic movement as well as the interpretation of Freudian theory and for such current issues as the problem of interpretation. What I mean is that you should not think that these are abstract points and translators' habits. We focus on details but these details lead to essential issues. To be more precise, we have to recall that Strachey's first edition of the Standard Edition dates from 1953-1966, Strachey's death, 1967 and the edition of the index to the, 1974. You can compare this to the dates I gave you for France. Lacan (1953), with his "Rapport de Rome" and the unearthing (it's a bad term), highlighting, the emphasizing of the notion of après-coup, and then Laplanche and Pontalis, 1964-1967. So, y ou can see that one cannot criticize Strachey for not having read Lacan or Laplanche and Pontalis; almost contemporary and the time-lag that

exists between French and British psychoanalysis, are reason enough, especially when one knows that psychoanalysis continues to have difficulty penetrating anglophone countries. That the 1974 index is indigent about the après-coup is a little more serious.

But, Strachey did spot the term and it is indexed as "deffered". I do not know why in the Language of Psychoanalysis deffered is spelled with an "I". To "deffer" means "to postpone, to delay"8 différer in French means to postpone to a later time. It is a mistake of English in the Language of Psychoanalysis which was never corrected. One must write "to deffer" (sic) which means "to defer, postpone, report." Furthermore with "action" the substantive Nachträglichkeit is translated by "deffered action."

I'll come back to these details later on. Because of a lack of a proper translation and a correct understanding, as we shall see, Strachey, or one which would be broad enough, Strachey misses the concept. According to a verbal communication--I don't have the source of it-- a communication from a German psychoanalist at a recent congress in London, Strachey who, as some people put it was "une fine mouche," i.e. very shrewd, and who is not otherwise essentially an analyst, which is a good reason to call him a "fine mouche," (literally a 'smart fly'), had

8 I do not have the Index on hand so I cannot veiry at the moment. Amusingly, Laplanche spells Defered with 2 ff.

proposed at the outset, at least for some occurrences, you will see that it doesn't fit very well, retroactivity or retroactively. Which is easily translated into French by "retroactivité" or "retroaction" and "retroactif." And it is supposed to be Jones who imposed the term "deferred" and "deferred action." You can see that the idea of retroactivity moves inversely to the arrow of time and that "deferred action" follows the arrow of time; this is obviously an argument to say that the Standard Edition, guided by Jones imposed a "scientific" conception, scientistic even against a certain hermeneutic interpretation of Freud's work. On the other hand, one must point out that "retroactivity" fits only in four or five occurrences; I identified many examples where retroactivity was unacceptable. To be clear, there are two mistakes in Strachey. One is not to follow the genesis of the concept in ordinary language, in Freud's work. A mistake which is partially excusable because Strachey did not have the Freud-Fliess's correspondence at his disposal, where the concept is in the process of gestation within the frame of the seduction theory.The other mistake is to dissociate, a little, depending on the content, various meanings of the word which are often very different. Two mistakes which are one and the same,The uniqueness of the signifier being a infallible thread to follow the fluctuating flow of the signifieds.Having thus eliminated Jones's suggestion, the "retroactive" hypothesis, hermeneutic, as we characterize it, there remains either a banal meaning flattening the

nachträglich on a later (subsequently, later),9 or a meaning sticking to the a and to a unidirectional conception of the seduction theory: what has been inscribed during childhood arrow of time remains in a latency state to exert a "deferred action" later on." This is what I called the "time bomb" theory, the second event being strictly determined by the first, from which it is the pure and simple consequence.I should emphasize that such a theory is never operating in Freud, in spite of all the difficulties we are going to spell out.

Only once, but it is in Masson's translation of the Freud-Fliess correspondence, does the term afterwards appear, very close to "après-coup." I took the liberty to attempt to legislate for the English language by proposing this unique and excellent term (at least in the translation of some of my texts in English). Furthermore English has a quasi infinite capacity to create new substantive with the suffix ness. Hence the couple afterwards-afterwardness which, I hope will impose itself with the entire theory that it implies. Now, the question is to determine to what extent Freud, creating the term, approaches the concept.

The history of the nachträgllich in Freud , which I will now examine, is complex. It involves at once the evolution of a thought and the evolution of a term, two evolutions which are not all parallel but which might be described as 9 In English in the French text.

syncopated. "Syncopated," we can play a little with this term which comes from the Greek "kopto," "to cut." Two beat syncopation. In the cardiac sense, it is "a momentary stop," a cut in the /heart/beat, therefore a momentary stop of the heart and then the definitive stop, but in principle it is momentary since the heart resumes right away; and also, in a musical sense, but more generally it concerns anything that is rhythm and which is defined (the best definition that I could find is this): "A note sounded on a weak tempo or on the weak part of a beat and extended to a strong beat." I am everything but musician and I am ashamed to draw a music score; what is important is that on this score there are two beats and that the note is sounded here on a weak beat, let's say that it is the end of the measure, and that it extends to the strong beat in the next measure. Jazz, the "Swing" phenomenon, is nothing more than the use of this phenomenon of syncopation. The "syn," and the "with," of syncopation is essential, that is to say that there is no syncopation if there are no two lines. The line of the base rhythm and the line of the melody and the play of one in relation to the other. The play of two chains, one in relation to the other, the melodic chain on the rhymed chain in the regular measure in the time beaten. Syncopation in the sense of momentary stop has any sense of musical syncopation precisely because of these two chains.

You can see that in the evolution of the concept the contents themselves are already present in it, that is to sy

the elements, the double element, the two chains and also their play (interaction). In Freud, this story is also going to trigger an interrogation about what might be called a Freudian concept, and in this case too this question has been recently revived with respect to the problem of translation. "What is a concept?" Along with the explicit concepts, the question arises continuously for the translator about what one might call the implicit concepts.When is there an explicit concept? And it is not as simple at it looks, because if people agree to say that Verdrängung, "repression," is a Freudian concept, one should note that such terms as frequently used as "Angst," anxiety, or "Zwang," constraint, have recently been refused their quality of "concepts" in so far as their unicity is refused (rejected) in translation. Let's say that what qualifies as concept in Freud finds its legitimacy in the fact that one must seek to always translate it in the same way so as to track down its continuity. Thus in Freud, next to explicit concepts--a while ago I mentioned one of the most obvious, that of repression"--, very soon I will ran across something like "quasi-concepts." Thus there is something what [qualifies] as "concept," as we put it, and it always remains concept "après-coup." Which means in the après-coup of reading, and it is of course in the après-coup of Freudian thought, something begins to become concept.

Anaclisis (étayage) Antehnung is such an example. But there are other found in Freud's translation: "surmontement" to translate Überwindung, Schnsuscht,

translated by désirance. On désirance, I found this morning, looking through Fliess's letters, that, in the very early manuscripts, the ms. J, which is incorrectly translated by "desire" is still "Schnsucht."

So, in the evolution of this concept of après-coup, even in Freud, is syncopated, which means that its evolution, punctuated by après-coup with blackouts which we ar going to discuss and renaissances (revivals) where one did not expect them, mobilizes complex series, like syncopation, precisely. On the one hand there is the evolution of the content in relation to the evolution of the signifier, to say very simple things, that is to say that at some moments, as you will see, the idea of après-coup appears in Freudian thought while the term doesn't much appear where one would expect to see it; and inversely, the term appears while one didn't expect it. And then there is another syncopated play within the signifier itself between the current meaning or meanings, the Sprachgebrauch, and on the other hand the tendency to conceptualization which is better recorded by the formation of a substantive, here the Nachträglichkeit. But the concept can appear without the formation of a substantive.

This is pretty complicated but one cannot do without it. "I gladly would forgo all these complications, but you know the saying: "Let the Gentlemen assassins begin." I just

cited a text by Freud exactly written during this period and it is a sentence that it is amusing to find there, in the letter 127 dated April 1897 (p. 248). This sentence, which has been sell identified by the editor of the Fliess letters (Masson) "Let the Gentlemen assassins begin," had thus only been found in Civilization and its Discontent, with respect to aggressivity and death penalty. Freud says roughly this: "I would tend to agree with this representative who in a French Assembly, the day when the abolition of death penalty was debated, got up and said in the silence (of the room): 'I would be in favor of the abolition of the death penalty but let the Gentlemen assassins begin'."

What is peculiar here is that there is a paramnesia of Freud. Apparently, this [is being said] not in a real debate but in a novel by Alphonse Karr, Les guêpes (The Wasps). (my knowledge comes from Masson) published in 1840.So, I am wondering if there was a debate about death penalty before 1840. It is already remarkable that Freud transposed in reality, in a real seance of the Assembly, something which is a sentence from a novel. Additionally, what is amusing, is that Freud makes an epistemological completely metaphoric use of of this type: I would readily abandon these complications, but let reality itself begin by not being complicated. If reality was not complicated, I would not be forced to be complicated.