An Urgency of Satisfaction

An Urgency of Satisfaction [1]
Jacques-Alain Miller

In any case, “the mirage of truth” has a “terminal point”, that of the real unconscious which can be seen and appreciated from “the satisfaction that marks the end of the analysis”. [2]

         It couldn’t have been put more soberly, more delicately. There is an end of analysis when there is satisfaction. This doubtless supposes a transformation of the symptom which, from discomfort and pain, delivers the satisfaction that had been inhabiting and animating it from the start. The criterion is to know how to handle one’s symptom so as to draw satisfaction from it.

         Hence the thesis that Lacan formulates as analysis being in charge of [préside] an urgency. This goes farther than coordinating analysis with a demand. What is called demand, from the point of view of the symbolic, is in fact “the request with an urgency”.[3] This is what is gauged in the preliminary interviews. Is there or is there not an urgency for satisfaction? Has the subject reached the point of no longer knowing what to do with his sinthome, apart from the suffering?

1. Miller, Jacques-Alain, “Pass Bis”, Psychoanalytical Notebooks 17, “Transference”, tr. A. Price, London Society of the NLS, London, 2008, p. 100.

2. Lacan, Jacques, “Preface to the English Edition of Seminar XI”, The Lacanian Review 6, “¡Urgent!”, tr. R. Grigg, NLS, Paris, 2018, p. 24.

3. Ibid.