The texts collected in this volume stem from the period of time between the beginning of March and the end of June 2017. These were four vertiginous months that started with what Jacques-Alain Miller described as his “moment of seeing”: the possibility of a victory in the French presidential elections – which were to be held on May 7 of that year – of the National Front, headed by Marine Le Pen, whose candidacy had been “un-demonized” by the media, the political class and a not inconsiderable sector of the intelligentsia. This possibility posed a threat to the very conditions of existence of psychoanalysis.

That first moment gave way to a call to action and commitment, promoted by J.-A. Miller, who mobilized during the following weeks the School of the Freudian Cause (ECF) with multiple public interventions by its members. The involvement of the ECF in an electoral campaign was an unprecedented milestone in the history of psychoanalysis, an act regarding which Jacques-Alain Miller stated that it entailed the pass of the ECF as a subject School.

Did the mobilization affect the results in any way? In the world of statistical data it is not easy to know, but without a doubt it did so in the field of political debate, contributing to the re-demonization of the infamous candidacy. And, beyond its impact on the vote and its effects on public opinion or the debate of ideas, this act marked the beginning of a new wager for Lacanian psychoanalysis and the schools of the WAP, with the involvement of psychoanalysis in the political field.

Once started, the movement did not stop there, quite the contrary: it had only just begun. This act, as pointed out by J.-A. Miller in several of the texts that make up this volume, such as the Quilting Point seminar, the Conference in Madrid and Freudian Field Year Zero, is inspired, on the one hand, by a fundamental postulate of the Freudian text “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”: “In the psychic life of the individual, the other counts, with total regularity, as a model, as an object, as an auxiliary and as an enemy, and that is why from the very beginning individual psychology is simultaneously social psychology in this broader but entirely legitimate sense.” On the other hand, this act took up the truth of Jacques Lacan’s proposal formulated in the “Founding Act” of his School in 1964, thus following “his oldest and most profound inspiration” in order to give it a new scope.

After May 7, a third moment began, with the extension to other countries of this movement, thus initiating a debate in the Freudian Field on the relationship between psychoanalytic discourse and the field of politics. This debate constituted the framework in which we can place the emergence of an interpretation, the one introduced by Jacques-Alain Miller when formulating Freudian Field Year Zero: “Everything begins again, without being destroyed, to be taken to a higher level.”

This proposal, addressed to the schools that are part of the WAP and at the same time to each of its members, leads psychoanalysis in the 21st century to an Aufhebung that – drawing on the lessons to be drawn from the French experience – allows the constitution of a base of operations that points to the reconquest of the Freudian Field from the IPA and the triumph over the impasses of civilization that threaten the very existence of psychoanalysis. Hence the next step, the constitution of “the movement Zadig” and the deployment of multiple seminars in various countries whose purpose is to “forever inscribe Lacan’s teaching in the universal discourse.”

This volume, which I am pleased to have promoted, has had the collaboration of numerous colleagues from the World Association of Psychoanalysis and the support of Zadig Spain and the bodies of the ELP. It is the effect of the interpretation by Jacques-Alain Miller. It has been built with the waves that he wants to convey to public opinion.

 

 

Translated by Roger Litten