Trauma and pain without a subject: disruptive marks in the psyche, resignified 1st edition tesone 20
Trauma and Pain Without a Subject: Disruptive Marks in the Psyche, Resignified 1st Edition Tesone
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/trauma-and-pain-without-a-subject-disruptive-marks-i n-the-psyche-resignified-1st-edition-tesone/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
“The author discusses the challenges facing a psychoanalysis that refuses to be a relic. Tesone re-thinks subjective production through the vicissitudes of the drives and their identification destiny, in a trajectory from indiscrimination to the acceptance of otherness and subjective evolution. How can we produce theoretical thinking anchored in clinical experience and capable of fighting dogmatism? How do we consider the complexity of the subject, which oscillates between the redundant and the unpredictable, between repetition and novelty? These questions permeate his book. It provokes enthusiasm because it dares to be open while also based on experience. A book that invites a dialogue. It has brought me to re-think notions I thought definitive. For this I am grateful and recommend it.”
Dr. Luis Horstein, physician and psychoanalyst, President of FUNDEP (Foundation for Psychoanalytic Studies)
“The author highlights two poles that structure the traumatic: the existence of the other and the subject’s own sexuality. He emphasizes the specific in what is Disruptive, the Traumatic, and Symbolization: a total lack of representation, a black hole of the psyche. He alerts us to the excess of binding as the antithesis of chaos, which is the basis of psychic change. In this sense, psychoanalysis is called upon to work through the tension between the sexes of the phallic order and the ‘nothing’ order, generating idiosyncratic representations and overcoming the cisgender product of thwarting binarism. In this set of psychoanalytic texts, Tesone gives us a creative, in-depth discussion of the vicissitudes of the body.”
Moty Benyakar, physician, psychiatrist, and Full Member of the Israeli Psychoanalytic Society; Professor Emeritus of the USAL, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Disruptive Committee in the doctoral program in Psychology of the USAL; Full Member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and of the International Psychoanalytical Association
Trauma and Pain Without a Subject
Trauma and Pain Without a Subject explores the necessity of the subject of trauma emerging, particularly when a victim has experienced but not worked through disruptive situations, in order for unconscious pain to finally be experienced.
The book is presented in three parts, with the first, “Transgression and Crime”, uncovering silence around the topic of incest and sexual violence within the clinic. The second part, “Between Completeness and Nothingness”, develops the topic of sexual violence and considers the construction of femininities and masculinities within the paradigm of a heteronormative patriarchal society, with reference to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The third part, “Yes, We See, But What? What We Hear”, explores the intimate relation between the visual and the auditory, especially in relation to hysteria.
Trauma and Pain Without a Subject will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and to all psychoanalytic practitioners working with trauma.
Juan-Eduardo Tesone is Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Un iversity of Salvador (USAL), Argentina, and Associate Professor of Psychology at Paris Nanterre University, France. He is a Member and Training Analyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and Member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is the author of more than 100 articles in specialist journals, in Spanish, French, English, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Croatian, and author and co-author of several books.
Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series
Series Editor: Silvia Flechner
IPA Publications Committee
Natacha Delgado, Nergis Güleç, Thomas Marcacci, Carlos Moguillansky, Rafael Mondrzak, Angela M. Vuotto, Gabriela Legoretta (consultant)
Recent titles in the Series include
The Infinite Infantile and the Psychoanalytic Task
Psychoanalysis with Children, Adolescents and their Families
Edited by Nilde Parada Franch, Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, Mónica Cardenal and Majlis Winberg Salomonsson
A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Trauma
Post-Traumatic Mental Functioning, the Zero Process, and the Construction of Reality
Joseph Fernando
The Poetry of the Word in Psychoanalysis
Selected Papers of Pere Folch Mateu
Edited by J.O. Esteve and Jordi Sala
The Freudian Matrix of André Green
Towards a Psychoanalysis for the 21st Century
Edited by Howard B. Levine
Desire, Pain and Thought
Primal Masochism and Psychoanalytic Theory
Marilia Aisenstein
Trauma and Pain Without a Subject
Disruptive Marks in the Psyche, Resignified
Juan-Eduardo Tesone
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com
Trauma and Pain Without a Subject
Disruptive Marks in the Psyche, Resignified
Juan-Eduardo Tesone
Designed cover image: Getty | fcscafeine
First published 2024 by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
The right of Juan-Eduardo Tesone to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-64778-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-64777-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-64779-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781032647791
Typeset in Palatino by codeMantra
About the author
Juan-Eduardo Tesone, MD, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalysis at the University of Salvador (USAL), Argentina, and Associate Professor of Psychology at Paris Nanterre University, France. He received his degree as a psychiatrist from Paris XII University. He did his analyst training and became Full Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (1992–2019). He is a Full Member and Training Analyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and a Member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. For eleven years he directed a center for psychotherapy (Centre-Médico-Psycho-Pédagogique Pichon-Rivière), in connection with Juvenile Justice in Paris, which specialized in the subject of physical and/or sexual violence towards minors. He also directed “SOS Family in Danger”, a telephone counseling center for potentially violent parents who wished to seek help. He is the author of more than 100 articles in specialist journals, in Spanish, French, English, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Croatian; co-author of 18 books in various languages; and author of In the Traces of Our Name: The Influence of Given Names in Life, which was given an award by the Ministry of Culture of the Argentine Nation (2011) and also, in 2019, by the IPA, which gave the book its most important award granted by it for a psychoanalytic work. He has been bestowed Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite (2013) and Chevalier des Palmes Académiques (2021) by thet French Government.
Series editor’s foreword
The Publications Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association presents a new volume in the series “Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications”.
The aim of this series is to focus on the scientific production of significant authors whose works are outstanding contributions to the psychoanalytic field and to set out relevant ideas and themes generated during the history of psychoanalysis, that deserve to be known and discussed by psychoanalysts of our Association.
Our goal is to share these ideas with the psychoanalytic community and professionals of related disciplines, to expand their knowledge and generate a productive interchange between the text and the reader. The IPA Publications Committee is pleased to publish Juan-Eduardo Tessone’s book A pain without a subject.
Dr. Juan-Eduardo Tesone is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, Full Member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA), and former Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP)
This book is composed of three parts. The first, titled “Transgression and Crime”, concerns a relatively taboo problem: incest. Dr. Tesone argues that hearing about Oedipus in psychoanalysis is much more frequent, but one rarely hears about consummated incest. He states that incest is not more intense than Oedipus. On the contrary, it is the denial of incest. Oedipus builds subjectivity by enabling acceptance of lack, whereas incest destroys any otherness and, consequently, the child’s subjectivity.
Dr. Tesone tries to deepen transdisciplinary dialogue with Law, Philosophy, Linguistics, Semiology, and Anthropology through his theorization. In this endeavor, he takes psychoanalytic practice out of the abbey of the consulting room and into a position in community mental health.
The second part is titled “Between Completeness and Nothingness”. The subject of completeness is futilely sought by all human beings when confronted with nothingness, but it is historically attributed to women by a hetero-normative patriarchal perspective. For the author, nothingness in the form of symbolic castration concerns every human being, independent
xii Series editor’s foreword
of sex or gender. William Shakespeare contributes to his proposal through Much Ado About Nothing.
In chapter 16, “Cumulative Trauma and ‘troumatique’”, he interrogates the field of traumatic questions in a paradigmatic way: the unrepresentable, putting in tension the classic analytic device of making the unconscious conscious, revealing that in this clinic, the lifting of repression is not enough to trace something unconsciously to become a mnemic trace. On the contrary, on certain occasions the traumatic experience generates a vacuum of figuration that aspires to every possible form of representation.
Finally, the author cites Borges, the great clinician of the human soul who has left, in The Aleph (1949), a particularly hope-inspiring sentence for our clinical work: “To change the past is not to change a mere single event; it is to annul all its consequences, which tend to infinity.” Likewise, the French poet Paul Valéry summarizes: “The past has a future.” The author agrees with both writers and allows himself to add that when the past is no longer mere repetition, something new and creative may emerge.
For the author, “the red thread that runs through this book is the disruptive marks, in filigree in any disruptive condition, that, to the extent that they can be resignified, will allow the elaboration of the traumatic feeling.
Silvia Flechner Series Editor Chair, IPA Publications Committee
Preface
In order to write the introduction to a book, it is necessary to generate interest and enthusiasm. It also needs to have a connection with the text in order to show that it does not necessarily imply theoretical agreement with the author. Even so, it also needs to generate excitement that spontaneously creates desire to discuss ideas. Having been given all three circumstances, I think Juan treasured his invitation to write this short text, which honors me. From the introduction, Juan’s book generates a state of expectation by beginning to explain the reason for his writing. Juan refers to this as an aid to process the experiences that occurred in the analytic sessions from the past until what happened in the moment. It also refers to the self-therapeutic value for psychoanalysts, who write by allowing themselves to process both the patient’s suffering as their own. There he thinks that instead of transference and countertransference, he prefers to call it a reciprocal transference. It is very striking when Juan refers to this double condition as a sedentary lifestyle in relation to the recurring themes; the different cultures he has inhabited throughout his life and with some nomadism in the geographical sense. It is during this time period that we have shared some special moments of our lives.
Juan was born in Buenos Aires, but grew up in Mar del Plata, a city 400 km south of the capital. After high school, he went to study Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, and that was where we met for the first time in our fourth year, in the hospital, where we both attended from Monday to Saturday. The hospital unit was a melting pot of knowledge about ailments, both physical and psychical. During this period, our sensitivity was tested. They were three years of great awareness and in contact with the suffering of human beings. We were very young, and we enjoyed it very much. It was medicine up close and real, which we had not observed before and which left its mark. I remember the reaction when I told my group of friends at the end of my studies that I had decided to dedicate myself to psychoanalysis. They appeared to be sad as they rested their hands on my shoulder. It seemed that maybe I had forgotten about the body and real medicine. It felt that they had lost someone. I never asked Juan how his process was, but I suspect it was similar. Afterwards
we were companions for a brief time on a course in psychotherapy for children. Shortly after that, Juan left for Paris. At this moment in time, 1978, I had two very young children, so I stayed and began analytic training. Many years later, Juan and I would meet again in various congresses throughout Europe. We found ourselves among the climate of nomadism of psychoanalysts which does not only include those who have lived for many years outside their country.
On Juan´s return to Argentina, we got in touch again and so we continue our friendship. We both know that the thread “invisible to the eye” that unites and sustains us is always there.
I will now return to Juan’s introduction. There the author poses a question that opens new paths to think about language: Your experience of living in two cultures with two different languages?
This has led Juan to consider the way in which language and subjectivities undoubtedly impact our way of thinking when shifting from one language to another, in his case Spanish and French. This has multiplied the senses and also has the freedom of movement between different psychoanalytic theories. Jacques Derrida goes so far as to say that a psychoanalyst should speak at least two different languages.
This book is divided into three parts that bring together and, in turn, develop three themes: In the first, entitled “Transgression and Crime”, it addresses a theme of hot news, such as sexual abuse with implied violence. Juan cites that fact and also the question of incest. He also draws our attention to how little psychoanalytic literature there is in relation to consummated incest. He proposes that this issue has been condemned in the psychoanalytic clinic to the same silence as that of the victim of consummated incest. This observation, together with the development he makes on the subject in dialogue with other disciplines, opens a path that exhorts us to continue thinking. He also gives voice to what happens to ourselves when we are confronted with these stories in our consultation rooms.
In the second part, “Between Completeness and Nothingness”, Juan continues developing the issue of sexual violence, which he prefers to “sexual abuse”. He then ventures into current topics of debate, which also imply the construction of femininities and masculinities within the paradigm of patriarchal society. This part also includes a very interesting chapter on tattooing which is illustrated by clinical material. In addition, it shows us that the clinical psychoanalyst has great experience in the analysis of children and adolescents.
In the third part, which bears as its title a phrase of the French poet, Jacques Ancet: “Yes, We See, But What? What We Hear.” This studies the relationship between what one sees and what is heard starting from hysteria. The developments of this part of the volume are particularly interesting and contribute to dissolving a debate on the importance of observation over listening or vice versa, a discussion at this point, as well as the author, I consider it obsolete. It is known that for the British School of
Psychoanalysis, the notion of unconscious fantasy is tinged with a strong accent on the perceptual–visual. The tradition of French psychoanalysis, moreover, coherent with the notion of structure and the Lacanian concept of the unconscious structured as a language, gets along better with the analyst’s focus located in listening. Even so, it is true that as soon as we approach the clinic, this polarization will be difficult to sustain: An analyst who “listens” to his patient does not register music, tone of voice, or body language, nor noises from outside the office, or their own bodily thoughts and sensations?
Lastly, and to let readers begin their own journey in this exciting volume, I found its title to be a discovery. From the reading of the different chapters, it emerges in a kind of après-coup, the notion that violence, in this case sexual, is desubjective, destroys the possibility of going through the necessary processes of subjectivation, and much more in childhood, puberty, and adolescence. The processes have been disruptive, I would say lacerating of the tissue necessary for the Self, even to experience pain. Hence, the great value and the great commitment of the psychoanalyst are to offer a space for historicism and also for the opportunity of subjectivation. Only then, when there is a subject, will he or she be able to feel the pain.
This is a book that is just as important and necessary in a world like the one we have today. We are now living after a pandemic, which has forced us to live with uncertainty and also with violence in its various forms. Even the horror of a war compels us to think and talk, to give voice to all those who do not have it. Finally, even Freud, so criticized for his position in relation to women, gave them a voice when he invited his first patients to associate freely on his couch, in what he called the “Talking Cure.”
Virginia Ungar
Past President of the IPA and Full Member of APdeBA (Buenos Aires Psychoanalytical Associations) Buenos Aires, November 2022
Introduction
As psychoanalysts, we may feel the need to write for more than one reason. First: we need to consider our working through of the clinical relation with our patients; second: it is a medium for thinking outside the urgency of the session and reflecting on what was said. Third, and at the same time, it is a way to be close to our patients while also preserving the distance we need to think about their complex problems. No less important: a way to find adequate proximity and distance between the other’s conflicts and our own, given that writing is an effort to work through the anxieties of clinical practice whose obstacles stimulated Freudian theorization.
Writing may calm anxieties and make it possible for clinical work, confronted with suffering, to work through, digest, and return it to our patients, metabolized, whether by pointing out, interpreting, or constructing something that brings relief to the suffering, both the patient’s and the analyst’s. “Transference” and “countertransference” are the terms commonly used, but I prefer the idea of reciprocal transference.
I was encouraged to gather my earlier writings for this book, whereby I discovered internal cohesion in lectures I had given in different places and articles I had published in journals in different languages. This quiescence, so to speak, of themes I found to recur in diverse cultures, and it contrasts with the geographical nomadism that has enriched my adult life.
I lived in Argentina in Mar del Plata during my childhood and adolescence, a city by the sea whose perpetual movement defined my perception of the real; the maritime horizon inspiring a wish to reach beyond that imaginary line. I studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires and specialized in psychopathology at the “Ricardo Gutierrez” Children’s Hospital, also in Buenos Aires. Formative years were, I would say, followed by a lifetime of “days of ongoing training.” A scholarship and a local coup d’état sent me to France in 1976, where I lived for 22 years.
I worked in Paris as a psychiatrist at the “La Salpêtrière” Hospital; I trained as a psychoanalyst at the Paris Psychoanalytical Society and “L’École Freudienne”; I was the director of a center for ambulatory psychotherapy for children and adolescents, which, at my suggestion, is named after the great Franco-Argentine professor, Enrique Pichon-Rivière. I held
a post as Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre, where I received my doctorate in psychology. Later, on my return to Buenos Aires in 1998, I became a Member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, and I continue to teach at several Argentine and foreign universities, in particular as Professor Emeritus in the doctoral program, “The Disruptive and Psychoanalysis” at Salvador University, chaired by Professor Moty Benyakar. I work and study in both my languages.
My confrontation with a different culture, but especially with a different language, led me to be doubly aware of language: on the one hand, the way it determines our way of thinking. Some of these texts were written in Spanish; others were written in French and later translated into Spanish. It is striking to note how the passage from one language to another multiplies meanings, semantics, and also perceptions of the real world. This duality generates enough stimuli for me to feel I am not inscribed in any one place or language or to any one theory as a reference. On the other hand, I have found a red thread that runs through cultures, languages, theories, and disciplines, stringing together my texts through years and geographies.
I propose the reading of this book in its three parts.
Part I is entitled “Transgression and Crime.” Its major themes concern a problem that is relatively taboo: that of incest. In psychoanalysis, we frequently hear about the Oedipus, but rarely about consummated incest. Incest is not a more intense Oedipus. On the contrary, it is the denial of incest. The Oedipus builds subjectivity by enabling acceptance of lack, whereas incest destroys any kind of otherness and consequently the child’s subjectivity.
Through my theorization I aim to deepen transdisciplinary dialogue with Law, Philosophy, Linguistics, Semiology, and Anthropology. In this endeavor, I take psychoanalytic practice out of the cloister of the consulting room and into a position in community mental health.
Especially concerning the latter, I describe the contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Françoise Héritier regarding the characteristics of the taboo against incest. I draw a distinction between what is different and what is identical, and also examine ways to ontologically clarify issues of gender, sex, parentality, and alliance, revealing the pact of restriction and the system of regulation in culture. Steering the course into disruptive scars, some ancestral myths about incest are dismantled, and, to exemplify, I conjugate aspects of clinical practice relating to the abject in the family scene and its sinister implications.
Part II, “Between Completeness and Nothingness,” covers the subject of completeness futilely sought by all human beings when confronted with nothingness but historically attributed to women by a hetero-normative patriarchal perspective. Nothingness in the form of symbolic castration concerns every human being, independent of sex and/or gender. William Shakespeare contributes to my concept through Much Ado About Nothing. When Shakespeare wrote this play, in 1600, in the form of a comedy, a Renaissance conception of women was placed in tension. His text distills
Introduction 3 subtle irony regarding prejudices about women and men in his time. On the lips of Beatrice he sets incisive and provocative dialogue with Benedict in a duel between equal, unusual for his era; they both deny love, but in the end become spouses. Through Hero, the daughter of Leonato, all of men’s fears concerning women’s infidelity appear, as well as the seal of disapproval reserved for women if they are not virgins when they marry. We may assume that this play is a satire on the condition of women and that it was not worth making such “ado” about Hero’s allegedly missing virginity or her false infidelity. However, “nothing” in Elizabethan slang means vagina. Therefore, “nothing” was intended to mean that women had nothing (no-thing) between their legs. In this point of view, Freud’s dark continent would be an expression of the unexplored and the enigmatic, but also of complexity exceeding the phallic register. I discuss this term nothing in greater detail in Chapter 13.
In the “Divine Jouissance, the Feminine Position, and the Mystics” (chapter 10) I consider feminine pleasure. Through centuries of male domination, female enjoyment has not been readily admitted —a prohibition of which hysterics were the main victims. They were the victims of such intolerance, paying a heavy price, sometimes at the cost of their own lives at the stake of the Inquisition. Even today, mutilation-excision of the clitoris is practiced on girls in vast areas of the world, condemning women to not obtaining the pleasure that this organ normally gives them.
What if the discourse of the mystics showed, in an extreme way although veiled by religious demands, the additional enjoyment of women, otherwise unspeakable if one does not want to suffer the same punishment as Tiresias?
The title of Part III quotes a fragment by the French poet, Jacques Ancet, suggesting the intimate relation between the visual and the auditory, especially in relation to hysteria: “ Yes, We See, But What? What We Hear.”
To analyze is to analyze discourse, the language the person is made of, its anchor points and points of “capitonné,” and also the affects running through both tongues and silences. Although remembering and infantile amnesia are classically valued for their subversion of repression, the need to forget has not been adequately considered —not just any forgetting, but forgetting that, as in mourning, enables decatechization of the object of grief. The short story, “Funes the Memorious”, by Jorge Luis Borges (1944), is an eloquent example of the need of a certain kind of forgetting that enables thinking. The psychic apparatus functions as a sort of conflictive alchemy between remembering and forgetting. Both are necessary to preserve a sense of identity and the ability to think—an eternal oscillation between memory’s imagination and the creative ability to forget.
In chapter 16, “Cumulative Trauma and ‘Troumatique’,” we examine in a paradigmatic way the field of the traumatic question—the unrepresentable— putting in tension the classic analytic device of making the unconscious conscious and revealing that in this clinic the lifting of repression is not enough for tracing something anemic to become mnemic. The traumatic experience
in the analytic session generates, at times, a vacuum of figuration that aspires to every possible form of representation. What inscription does the perception of the disruptive fact acquire? Regarding this question, my purpose will be to open a path rather than indicate an itinerary. Why do I call this book Trauma and Pain Without a Subject? Because it is often necessary for the subject to emerge, particularly when a victim has experienced disruptive situations but not worked them through, in order for a pain encysted in the unconscious, outside the circulation of signifiers, to finally be experienced. The discourse of trauma, one must point out, is always carried by someone desubjectivized by knowledge inscribed in the body, to the point that it suspends both judging attributions as well as judging existence. When time is stopped, it is because a subject is needed in order to have time, and in order to have a subject and, therefore, repression, a succession of signifiers is necessary. In the case of trauma, the chain of signifiers is interrupted, and it is precisely at this place that time is stopped, awaiting a new signifier.
Cloistered by a supposedly protective membrane, this pain undermines subjectivity. Only when the subject is able to appear, associated with the pain, when the membrane of this black hole sucking subjectivity into it becomes porous, its potentially traumatic scars entering circulation and being worked through, can the subject reappear and experience that pain resignified; this is the only way to metabolize it; the only means for a splitoff pain to finally become suffering inhabited by a subject who accepts it as their own; it takes internal time rather than linear or calendar time.
I proposed above that the reader follow the order suggested by the succession of parts, progressively threading together the concepts in the chain of ideas. However, each chapter may also be read independently, in the context of the particular interests it may awaken in the reader. Since I tend to prefer a plurality of approaches, I do not imagine I have found all the possible meanings in the chain of the real. Perhaps what is most genuine is the existential value its writing has acquired for me and the pleasure of sharing it.
Last but not least, Borges, the great clinician of the human soul, has left us, in “The Aleph” (1949), a particularly hope-inspiring sentence for our clinical work: “To change the past is not to change a mere single event; it is to annul all its consequences, which tend to infinity.” The French poet Paul Valéry summarizes: “The past has a future.” I agree with both writers, and allow myself to add: when the past is no longer mere repetition, something new and creative may emerge.
The red thread that runs throughout this book is the disruptive marks, in filigree in any disruptive condition, that, to the extent that they can be resignified, will allow the elaboration of the traumatic feeling.
References
Borges, J. L. (1944). Funes el Memorioso [Funes the Memorious]. In: Obras Completas (pp. 483–485). Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974.
Borges, J. L. (1949). El Aleph. In: Obras completas (p. 573). Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974.
Part I Transgression and crime
1
Incests and transgression of the narcissistic taboo*
The term “incest” is derived from the Latin in-cestus, which means unchaste, impure; its antonym, castus, refers to what is pure, unsullied, but especially, in terms of the rites and rules, proper.
Although we commonly speak of “incest,” I think the term should be used in the plural, given the variability it presents in the diverse fields that discuss it from anthropological, legal, or psychoanalytic perspectives. Incest, or rather incests, provokes horror and fascination, repulsion and attraction, generating the emotional intensity that probably induced the circumstance that this complex problem has not been thought about: it has, instead, been sealed, at least in clinical work, into the same silence that is forced upon the victims. In recent years, it has returned via the mass media, but in a sensationalistic way, where it is reported frequently, but not always adequately. When we review psychoanalytic literature, we are surprised to find that few texts refer to consummated incest. Beyond Freud’s writings, which mention it, especially in Totem and Taboo (1912), contemporary psychoanalytic literature has published texts on it only in the last two decades. It is deplorable that a problem associated with humankind since ancient times, described in the Bible, mythology, literature, and anthropology, has not found an echo equal to its importance in the psychoanalytic field. Psychoanalysis discusses incestuous wishes quite easily, but not consummated incests. To what point has psychoanalysis become fixated on Freud’s abandonment of what he considered “his neurotics” (Freud, 1898)? We know that he renounced them only partially, and that near the end of his life he admitted the frequent existence of real scenes of seduction with severe pathological impact. However, we need first to ask what it is that provokes its prohibition. The laws in many countries consider sexual abuse aggravated when the perpetrator is a close older relative and the victim is underage. However,
* This is an expanded and modified version of my article, “Los incestos y la negación de la a lteridad” [“Incests and the negation of otherness”], in Revista de Psicoanálisis (Buenos Aires), Vol. 61, No. 4, 2004.
t he penal code does not use the term “incest.” The French penal code introduced this term only quite recently. The penal code in many other countries does not consider incestuous relations between adults a crime. Although the civil code regulates the degree of kinship that allows marriage, it does not regulate sexual relations between others that may be incestuous.
Anthropology is the field that has thought the most about the prohibition of incest and has elaborated theories on it. Here again, we need to ask what it is that provokes its prohibition. We review the anthropological perspective, since psychoanalysis may share a certain view, although the reasons for the prohibition may not be isomorphic, and psychoanalysts may approach the need of prohibition via different though confluent paths.
Why do we prohibit incest?
In his book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Engels assumed that in prehistoric times the family lived in such promiscuity that sexual relations existed between all its members. This family modality, according to Engels, soon disappeared and was replaced by family groups before the formation of the contemporary family. We may ask: at the beginning, was there absolute disorder? Nothing is more uncertain in Engels’ thesis. Modern anthropological theories agree in denying the existence, even in earliest times, of such family magma.
In Totem and Taboo (1912–13), Freud proposed to explain the prohibition of incest through the repentance of the brothers following parricide and their alliance as a mechanism to regulate social relations.
In spite of the anthropological uncertainty of this myth, it has the advantage, as Lévi-Strauss (1947) believed, of successfully explaining the dawn of civilization.
This French author made the prohibition of incest the paradigm of his theorization, highlighting its universality. It is the primacy of exogamic law over endogamy, based on giving away and the rule of reciprocity. However, as Lacan (1959) points out, although Lévi-Strauss indicates why the father does not marry his daughter (daughters must be exchanged), he does not say why the son does not have sexual relations with his mother.
Incest as defined by Lévi-Strauss is extended by F. Héritier (1994), who adds a different type of incest, with heavy anthropological and clinical implications: she calls it the “second type,” to differentiate it from the Lévi-Straussian “first type.” She conceives of the prohibition of incest as a problem of the circulation of fluids from one body to another. According to this anthropologist, the basic criterion of incest is the contact between identical humors, which involves the most fundamental element of hu man society: its mode of constructing categories of the identical and the different. Héritier (1994, p. 12) states that “The prohibition of incest protects from the horror of the identical.” You may not “put the same onto the same,” explain the Samo people, who use the term “the dog’s way” to designate incest.
The “second type” of incest is indirect incest, which unites two close blood relations through a common sexual partner. I review the theory of this anthropologist because Lévi-Straussian incest does not explain the prohibition in certain communities against a man having sexual relations with his first wife’s sister. It includes several variants, such as a man with two sisters, a man with his wife’s daughter (identity of substance between mother and daughter) or, symmetrically, a woman with two brothers, a woman with her husband’s son, etc. All these incests assume the meeting of humors between two identical fleshes through a common partner. The incest takes place through another person by way of “humors,” the body substances that travel from one to the other by means of their transitive character through a body shared at successive times.
This author proposes a reinterpretation of incest in Sophocles’ tragedy: does Oedipus, in the depths of the sexual encounter with his mother, also find his father, who was there before him? This homosexual variant has heavy clinical impact in psychoanalysis.
Héritier finds that prohibitions are not explained simply by the rule of marriage division that enables construction of the social bond as defined by Lévi-Strauss. She introduces what she considers most fundamental in human societies: “the way they construct their categories of the identical and the different” (Héritier, 1994) The opposition between the identical and the different is the first category, according to Héritier. She considers incest an accumulation of the identical: “these crimes have traits in common: they fail to separate what must be separated, mix what must be kept apart, and confuse genders, sexes, parentality, and alliance.”
I consider that this difficulty in conceiving the qualities of difference and otherness occupies thecenter of the clinical problem of the incestuous act. It is related to narcissistic pathology.
Depending on the culture, consummated incest, which accumulates the identical, may be considered to provoke natural catastrophes such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc.—an indivisible association between symbolic human disorder and the way of nature.
However, the prohibition of incest is not simply a prohibition: while it prohibits, it also provides order. To underscore this ordering aspect, I propose to examine an imaginary initial interview in which the patient tells his future psychoanalyst his reason for consulting:
A psychoanalyst receives a young adult for an initial interview, and asks what has brought him to consult. The future patient answers, “Well, everything started when I got married. I made a huge mistake! I married a widow who had a 25-year-old daughter, who became my step- daughter. One day, my father visits us and, incredibly, falls in love with my step-daughter. Shortly afterwards, my father and my step- daughter get married. Suddenly, my step-daughter becomes my step-mother. Sometime after that, my wife and I have a son who becomes my father’s brother-inlaw, since he is my step-daughter’s half-brother and she is my father’s wife (and therefore my step-mother). Now, my baby is also my step-mother’s
half-brother and therefore is a bit my uncle. My wife is also my step-grandmother, since she is my step-mother’s mother. And don’t forget that my step-mother is also my step-daughter. And if we look a bit further, we see that I’m my step-grandmother’s husband, and therefore I’m not only my wife’s grandson and also her husband, but I’m also my own grandfather. Do you understand why I came to see you?
The fictional humor of this interview reminds me that the family creates and institutes three relational orders: (1) consanguinity (brother, sister); (2) alliance (the couple); and (3) filiation (son, daughter).
In this sense, it is an institution, since it institutes an order. Each person occupies a position assigned by the structure. The existence of the family intrinsically and always assumes an orderthat enables others to recognize who is who or, in other words, each individual’s position. As underscored by M. C. and E. Ortigues (1966), nobody may say who is who without making a certain number of choices between the logical possibilities offered by language to allude to positional value: a person is a son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister, etc. The prohibition of incest supports a logical function without which everything would become obscure, confusing each person’s limits.
Benveniste (1969) studies the evolution of different kinship terms in the Indo-European languages and explains their classificatory function. He points out the greater importance of the function over the blood relation, which may or may not exist. The value of the kinship term is given by its position in the family structure. The value of each position is representational rather than absolute. Beyond the place given by biology, we are led to consider the symbolic function exerted depending on the position occupied. What is important about the possibility of parentality is not the position of the biological genitor but rather this person’s capacity to carry out that symbolic function of parentality. This function may or may not correspond to biological filiation. Therefore, we could say that all maternity or paternity is, by definition, adoptive, since it requires recognition of the other and recognition of oneself as a link in a chain of trans generational symbolic functions. A child requires a symbolic family order in order to emerge as a subject. This order presumes a difference between the generations.
The princeps function of the family, whatever form it may take, is to produce otherness (Tesone, 2004). Transgression of the prohibition in the family consists, according to R. Barthes (1971), in altering the terminological clarity of the parental profile that produces a single signified. An example is the girl named Olympia in de Sade’s novel, who is given various simultaneous names. Olympia, says de Sade’s incestuous monk, “unites the triple honour of being my daughter, my granddaughter, and my niece.” “The transgression lies in naming outside the lexical division,” according to Barthes; transgression in this perspective is seen as a surprise of naming. This author highlights that incest consists in transgressing a semantic rule by creating a homonymy, that is to say, incest is also a surprise in vocabulary.
Incests and transgression of the narcissistic taboo 11
References
Barthes, R. (1971). Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Paris: Seuil, Benveniste, E. (1969). Le vocabulaire des institutions Indo-Européennes. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Engels (1884). El origen de la familia. La propiedad privada y el Estado [The origin of the family, private property and the state]. Moscú: Editorial Progreso, 1966.
Freud, S. (1898). Sexuality in the aetiology of the neurosies. In: Standard Edition, Vol. 3. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.
Freud, S. (1912–13). Totem and Taboo.In: Standard Edition, Vol. 13. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.
Héritier, F. (1994). Les deux soeurs et leur mère. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob.
Lacan, J. (1959). Das ding. In: Le séminaire, Livre VII. Paris: Seuil, 1986.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1947). Les principes de la parenté. In: Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris: Mouton, 1967.
Ortigues, M. C., & Ortigues, E. (1966). L’oedipe africain. Paris: Plon.
Sade, Marquis de (1994). Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu. Paris: Gallimard.
Tesone, J.-E. (2004). Los incestos y la negación de la alteridad. Revista de Psicoanálisis, Buenos Aires, 61 (4): 857–878.
2 Incest is not the Oedipus
Beyond the horror, not without fascination, produced by the transgression of humanity’s oldest taboo, how do we think about the unthinkable? It is difficult to accept that what we on the outside would label as abject and ignominious is often found in a particular type of naturalized family, almost as a style of communication that sometimes goes on for years; everybody knows about it and yet nobody knows about it.
Unlike the Oedipus, which articulates desire and law and allows the emergence of otherness, incest erases the limits between family members and introduces a confusion of positions in which nobody knows who is who.
In my opinion, we need to underscore the radical difference between seduction theory, constitutive and foundational of infantile psychosexuality and of repression, which stimulates the representation and constitution of phantasms and leads to the Oedipus complex, on the one hand, and on the other hand, traumatic seduction, and the realm of the deadly. Laplanche (1986) describes the generalized seduction theory by placing the mother in the position as agent of originary or early seduction through the care she gives her baby’s body, including breast-feeding and close contact between the mother’s body and the child’s. This is necessary seduction, Laplanche writes, inscribed in the situation itself.
However, as I stated in a previous paper (Tesone, 1999), the traumatic seduction a child suffers is not part of seduction theory, since sexuality does not operate as a source of life and bonding but, rather, as a persecutory object that unbinds and mortifies. The adult’s drive irrupting in the child does not favor the ego’s integrity but, instead, leads to the consequence that Green (1993, p. 117) refers to as the “de-objectalizing function of the death drive.”
During my 11 years in charge of a center1 for consultation and ambulatory psychotherapy, specializing in the complexity of problems involved in physical and sexual intrafamilial violence committed against children and adolescents, I interviewed families referred by case workers, following the orders of juvenile court judges. These interviews are not mandatory, but it is obvious that this type of family does not consult unless the
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
Recent Science
(Nineteenth Century Review, December, 1900).
Dr. Patrick Manson, of London, is credited with the final formulation of the mosquito-malarial theory; but the proofs by which it has been established have come from a number of investigators, who have patiently traced the singular life-history of the parasite, throughout its passage from man to the mosquito and from the mosquito back to man, as a vehicle of disease. Among the latter, prominence is given to Major Ronald Ross, who lectured on the subject in London in September, 1900, and was reported in "The Times" as follows:
"They first carried on their life in man the intermediary host and later in the mosquito, the definitive host. These Hæmamœbidæ began as spores which entered a blood corpuscle, grew and became amœbæ. The nuclear matter divided, the corpuscle containing it burst, the spores scattered, and each spore then attached itself to a fresh corpuscle. The access of the typical fever began with this scattering of the spores, and thus the periodicity of the fever was accounted for. Besides this neutral proliferation there was proliferation by gametes. The blood of a fever patient exhibited the first forms of the gametocytes. The spore grew inside the blood corpuscle, and in that species which caused malignant fever it grew until it had almost eaten the whole of the host. It was then technically called a crescent. If this crescent were examined under the microscope a wonderful development might be observed to take place in a few moments. The crescent swelled and became first oval, then spherical, and in about 15 minutes after the drawing of the blood the microgametes made their escape and were to be seen wriggling about in the 'liquor sanguinis.' Ultimately they entered the macrogametocytes and produced zygotes, which was nothing but a perfect example of the sperm and the ovum process. "The whole process could be watched under the microscope. The mosquito, having bitten a person in whose blood these gametocytes were present, would take perhaps
100 of them into its own system, where the zygotes acquired a power of movement, edging towards the wall of the mosquito's stomach. About 12 hours afterwards they would be found adhering to the walls of the stomach, through which they passed and to which they finally attached themselves on the outside. This process was accomplished in about 36 hours. The zygotes then grew until they had increased to about eight times their original diameter and were almost visible to the naked eye. As the zygote increased it divided into meres containing nuclear matter, which went to the surface. The process here seemed to be closely similar to spermato-genesis, and Professor Ray Lankester declared that the process was the first known example of audrocratic parthenogenesis. When the final development was reached the cells burst and the blasts escaped and were immediately carried into all parts of the insect. They made their way to the salivary gland, with the evident purpose of seeking the blood of a fresh human host; and the injection of the secretion of the mosquito's salivary gland caused the bump which marked the mosquito's bite. A very large series of experiments had shown conclusively that malarial infection was caused by the bite of the mosquito.
"The parasites which infested human blood were carried only by one genus of mosquito 'Anopheles'; the genus 'Culex' was harmless. The two genera could be readily distinguished. For example, 'Anopheles' rested on walls with their tails stuck out perpendicular to the wall; 'Culex' attached themselves with tails hanging downwards. 'Culex' bred in the water in pots and tubs; 'Anopheles' in pools. The larvæ of 'Culex,' if disturbed, sank to the bottom; the larvæ of 'Anopheles' skimmed along the surface. It was doubtful whether the eggs of 'Anopheles' would live for more than a few days after desiccation. The eggs were laid in an equilateral triangular pattern; they were soon hatched, and the larvæ then began to feed on the green scum in the water. A still evening, just before or after rain, was the time most favourable for the hatching out from the pupæ. As to the adults, he believed that
they could live for a year; at any rate, they had been kept alive in tubes for more than a month; and it was certain that in England and Italy they hibernated. The female of 'Anopheles' alone was the biter, and though the favourite feeding time was at night, in West Africa the insects had been found to bite all day. While 'Culex' could be detected by its humming, 'Anopheles' was silent, and it was possible to be bitten without knowing of it at the moment. He had found that a blood diet was always necessary to the maturing of the eggs. He had kept many thousands of mosquitoes under observation and had never known one to lay eggs except after a meal of blood. Malarial infection was derived chiefly from the native children, who swarmed everywhere, and whose blood was full of the infecting parasites."
An expedition sent out to West Africa by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, to pursue investigations there, reported in December, 1900, that its observations confirm the conclusion "that the blood parasite which gives rise to malarial fever in man is carried by the mosquito from the native to the European and more especially from the native children.
{446}
The examination of the blood of hundreds of native children revealed the interesting fact that between 50 and 80 per cent. of those under five years, between 20 and 30 per cent. of ages between five and ten years, and a small percentage over ten years contained malarial parasites, often in very large numbers. The breeding places of the 'Anopheles' were found to be chiefly the dug-out native canoes in the regions of the mangrove swamps, claypits and puddles in the forested district, and at Lokoja puddles and ditches on and alongside the roads and footpaths. It was particularly noticed everywhere how carelessness in the construction of roads and footpaths, and more especially in the laying out of the areas surrounding the factories of the European traders, was accountable for the production of a large number of breeding
places for mosquitoes, which could easily have been avoided. In fact, it is certain that in West Africa such conditions are far more dangerous and more common than the proximity of a marsh or swamp, which is often noted as a cause of fever. … The two methods upon which alone any reliance can be placed as measures for prevention are (l) segregation of Europeans from natives of all sorts, at a distance of about half a mile; and (2) complete and efficient surface drainage of the whole district in the immediate neighbourhood of European quarters."
The detection of the mosquito as a carrier of one disease drew suspicion on the pestilent insect of other kindred crimes, and strong evidence of its agency in propagating yellow fever has been gathered already. A board of medical officers, which went from the United States to Cuba in the summer of 1900 to study the matter, reported in October that their investigations tended quite positively to that conclusion. The board was composed of Dr. Walter Reed, surgeon, United States Army, and Dr. James Carroll, Dr. A. Agramonte, and Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, all acting assistant surgeons of the United States Army. Two months later, so much confirmation had been obtained that Major-General Wood, Military-Governor of Cuba (himself a medical man) was reported, on the 29th of December, to have issued a general order directed to his post commanders, "reciting that the chief surgeon of the Department of Cuba has reported that it is now well-established that malaria, yellow fever and filarial infection are transmitted by the bites of mosquitoes. Therefore the troops are enjoined to observe carefully two precautions: First they are to use mosquito bars in all barracks, hospitals and field service whenever practicable. Second They are to destroy the 'wigglers,' or young mosquitoes, by the use of petroleum on the water where they breed. Permanent pools or puddles are to be filled up. To the others is to be applied one ounce of kerosene to each fifteen square feet of water twice a month, which will destroy not only the young but the old mosquitoes. This does not injure drinking water if drawn from below and not dipped out.
Protection is thus secured, according to the order, because the mosquito does not fly far, but seeks shelter when the wind blows, and thus each community breeds its own mosquitoes."
This was followed in April, 1901, by an order from the chief surgeon at Havana, approved by Surgeon-General Sternberg, U. S. A., which says: "The recent experiments made in Havana by the Medical Department of the Army having proved that yellow fever, like malarial fever, is conveyed chiefly, and probably exclusively, by the bite of infected mosquitoes, important changes in the measures used for the prevention and treatment of this disease have become necessary. So far as yellow fever is concerned, infection of a room or building simply means that it contains infected mosquitoes, that is mosquitoes which have fed on yellow fever patients. Disinfection, therefore, means the employment of measures aimed at the destruction of these mosquitoes. The most effective of these measures is fumigation, either with sulphur, formaldehydes or insect powder. The fumes of sulphur are the quickest and the most effective insecticide, but are otherwise objectionable. Formaldehyde gas is quite effective if the infected rooms are kept closed and sealed for two or three hours. The smoke of insect powder has also been proved useful; it readily stupefies mosquitoes, which drop to the floor and can then be easily destroyed. The washing of walls, floors, ceilings and furniture with disinfectants is unnecessary."
MEDICAL AND SURGICAL:
Recent advances in surgery.
"In no department of surgery has greater progress been made than in the treatment of diseases of the abdominal organs. … At the present time no abdominal organ is sacred from the surgeon's knife. Bowels riddled with bullet-holes are stitched up successfully; large pieces of gangrenous or cancerous intestine are cut out, the ends of the severed tube being brought into continuity by means of ingenious
appliances; the stomach is opened for the removal of a foreign body, for the excision of a cancer, or for the administration of nourishment to a patient unable to swallow; stones are extracted from the substance of the kidneys, and these organs when hopelessly diseased are extirpated; the spleen, when enlarged or otherwise diseased, is removed bodily; gall-stones are cutout, and even tumours of the liver are excised. The kidney, the spleen, and the liver, when they cause trouble by unnatural mobility, are anchored by stitches to the abdominal wall; and the stomach has been dealt with successfully in the same way for the cure of indigestion. Besides all this, many cases of obstruction of the bowels, which in days not very long gone by would have been doomed to inevitable death, are now cured by a touch of the surgeon's knife. The perforation of the intestine, which is one of the most formidable complications of typhoid fever, has in a few cases been successfully closed by operation; and inflammation of the peritoneum, caused by the growth of tuberculous masses upon it, has been apparently cured by opening the abdominal cavity. Among the most useful advances of this department of surgery must be accounted the treatment of the condition known as 'appendicitis,' which has been to a large extent rescued from the physician, with his policy of 'laissez faire,' and placed under the more resolute and more efficient government of the surgeon. A New York surgeon not long ago reported a series of 100 cases of operation for appendicitis, with only two deaths. …
{447}
"That surgery could ever deal with the abdominal organs in the manner just described would have seemed to our predecessors in the earlier part of the Queen's reign the baseless fabric of a vision. But the modern surgeon, clad in antisepsis, as the Lady in 'Comus' was 'clothed round with chastity,' defies the 'rabble rout' of microbes and dares things which only a short time ago were looked upon as beyond the wildest dreams of
scientific enthusiasm. It is scarcely twenty years since the late Sir John Erichsen declared in a public address that operative surgery had nearly reached its furthest possible limits of development. He pointed out that there were certain regions of the body into which the surgeon's knife could never penetrate, naming the brain, the heart, and the lung as the most obvious examples of such inviolable sanctuaries of life. Within the last fifteen years the surgeon has brought each of these organs, which constitute what Bichat called the 'tripod of life,' within his sphere of conquest. … It must, however, be admitted that the results of brain surgery, though brilliant from the operative point of view, have so far been somewhat disappointing as regards the ultimate cure of the disease. In certain forms of epilepsy, in particular, which at first seemed to be curable by removal of the 'cortical discharging centre' in the brain which is the source of the mischief, the tendency to fits has been found to return after a time, and the last state of the patient has been worse than the first. Still, the mere fact that the brain has been proved to be capable of being dealt with surgically with perfect safety is in itself a very distinct progress. …
"Other parts of the nervous system have been brought within the range of surgical art. The vertebral column has been successfully trephined, and fragments of bone pressing on the cord have been taken away in cases of fractured spine; tumours have also been removed from the spinal cord by Mr. Horsley and others. There is a steadily increasing record of cures of intractable neuralgia, especially of the face, by division or removal of the affected nerve trunks. … The ends of cut nerves have also been re-united, and solutions of their continuity have been filled up with portions of nerve taken from animals.
… The heart naturally cannot be made so free with, even by the most enterprising surgeon, as the brain or the lung. Yet within the past twelve months a Norwegian practitioner has reported a case which encourages a hope that even wounds of the heart may not be beyond surgical treatment. … Tuberculous
and inflammatory diseases of bones and joints, formerly intractable except by the 'ultima ratio' of the amputating knife, are now cured without mutilation. Deformities are corrected by division of tendons, the excision of portions of bone, and the physiological exercise of muscles, without complicated apparatus. The healing of large wounds is assisted by the grafting of healthy skin on the raw surface; wide gaps in bones and tendons are filled up with portions of similar structures obtained from animals." …
Malcolm Morris,
The Progress of Medicine during the Queen's Reign (Nineteenth Century, May, 1897).
See, also, X RAYS, below.
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE: International cataloguing.
On the 22d of March, 1894, the Secretaries of the Royal Society of London addressed the following communication to various institutions and societies: "The Royal Society of London, as you are probably aware, has published nine quarto volumes of 'The catalogue of scientific papers,' the first volume of the decade 1874-1883 having been issued last year. This catalogue is limited to periodical scientific literature, i. e., to papers published in the transactions, etc., of societies, and in journals; it takes no account whatever of monographs and independent books, however important. The titles, moreover, are arranged solely according to authors' names; and though the Society has long had under consideration the preparation of, and it is hoped may eventually issue, as a key to the volumes already published, a list in which the titles are arranged according to subject-matter, the catalogue is still being prepared according to authors' names. Further, though the Society has endeavored to include the titles of all the scientific papers published in periodicals of acknowledged
standing, the catalogue is, even as regards periodical literature, confessedly incomplete, owing to the omission of the titles of papers published in periodicals of little importance, or not easy of access.
"Owing to the great development of scientific literature, the task of the Society in continuing the catalogue, even in its present form, is rapidly increasing in difficulty. At the same time it is clear that the progress of science would be greatly helped by, indeed, almost demands, the compilation of a catalogue which should aim at completeness, and should contain the titles of scientific publications, whether appearing in periodicals or independently. In such a catalogue the titles should be arranged not only according to authors' names, but also according to subject-matter, the text of each paper and not the title only being consulted for the latter purpose. And the value of the catalogue would be greatly enhanced by a rapid periodical issue, and by publication in such a form that the portion which pertains to any particular branch of science might be obtained separately. It is needless to say that the preparation and publication of such a complete catalogue is far beyond the power and means of any single society.
"Led by the above considerations, the president and council of the Royal Society have appointed a committee to inquire into and report upon the feasibility of such a catalogue being compiled through international co-operation."
Library Journal, March, 1895.
The movement thus initiated received cordial support and led to the convening of an International Conference in London, in 1896. The Conference was opened on Tuesday, July 14, at Burlington House. "The 42 delegates, representing nearly all the governments of civilized countries and most of the leading scientific societies of the world, were welcomed by Sir John
Gorst, as provisional president. … It was decided that English, German and French should be the official languages of the conference. … The conference closed on Friday, July 17, the need of an international catalogue having been fully recognized, and a plan for its preparation mapped out. It was decided 'That it is desirable to compile and publish by means of some international organization a complete catalogue of scientific literature, arranged according both to subject-matter and to authors' names. That in preparing such a catalogue regard shall, in the first instance, be had to the requirements of scientific investigators, to the end that these may, by means of the catalogue, find out most easily what has been published concerning any particular subject of inquiry.'
{448}
"The preparation of the catalogue is to be in charge of an international council, to be appointed, and the final editing and publication shall be conducted by a central international bureau, under the direction of the international council. Any country that is willing to do so shall be entrusted with the task of collecting, provisionally classifying, and transmitting to the central bureau, in accordance with rules laid down by the international council, all the entries belonging to the scientific literature of that country. 'In indexing according to subject-matter regard shall be had, not only to the title (of a paper or book), but also to the nature of the contents.' The catalogue shall comprise all published original contributions periodical articles, pamphlets, memoirs, etc. to the mathematical, physical, or natural sciences, … 'to the exclusion of what are sometimes called the applied sciences the limits of the several sciences to be determined hereafter.' …
"The central bureau shall issue the catalogue in the form of 'slips' or 'cards,' the details of the cards to be hereafter
determined, and the issue to take place as promptly as possible. … It was also decided that the central bureau shall be located in London, and that the Royal Society appoint a committee to study all undecided questions relating to the catalogue and to report later. … No system of classification was adopted and the subject was turned over for consideration to the committee of organization, which should also suggest 'such details as will render the catalogue of the greatest possible use to those unfamiliar with English.' January 1, 1900, is fixed as the date for the beginning of the catalogue."
Library Journal, August, 1896.
A second international conference, to consider further the plans previously outlined, was held October 11-13, 1898, at Burlington House, London. "The attendance was a representative one, including delegates from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States (represented by Dr. Cyrus Adler), Cape Colony, India, Natal, New Zealand, and Queensland. Russia, Spain and Italy were the only large continental countries unrepresented. …
"Professor Forster having formally presented the report of the Committee of the Royal Society, copies of which were forwarded in April last to the several governments represented at the conference, the discussion of the recommendations was opened, and it was resolved: 'That the conference confirms the principle that the catalog be published in the double form of cards and books. That schedules of classification shall be authorized for the several branches of science which it is decided to include in the catalog. That geography be defined as limited to mathematical and physical geography, and that political and general geography be excluded. That anatomy be entered on the list as a separate subject. That a separate
schedule be provided for each of the following branches of science: Mathematics, Astronomy, Meteorology, Physics, Crystallography, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Geology (including Petrology), Geography, mathematical and physical, Paleontology, Anatomy, Zoology, Botany, Physiology (including Pharmacology and Experimental Pathology), Bacteriology, Psychology, Anthropology. That each of the sciences for which a separate schedule is provided shall be indicated by a symbol.'" Resolutions were then adopted providing for the regulations to be observed in the preparation of cards or slips, and for the organization of the work through Regional Bureaus.
"The following recommendations of the Royal Society providing for international conventions in connection with the catalog were adopted: 'Each region in which a Regional Bureau is established, charged with the duty of preparing and transmitting slips to the Central Bureau for the compilation of the catalog, shall be called a constituent region. In 1905, in 1910, and every tenth year afterwards, an international convention shall be held in London (in July) to reconsider, and, if necessary, revise the regulations for carrying out the work of the catalog authorized by the international convention of 1898. Such an international convention shall consist of delegates appointed by the respective governments to represent the constituent regions, but no region shall be represented by more than three delegates. The rules of procedure of each international convention shall be the same as those of the international convention of 1898. The decisions of an international convention shall remain in force until the next convention meets.'
"The following recommendations of the Royal Society relating to the constitution of an International Council, which shall be the governing body of the catalog, were adopted: 'Each Regional Bureau shall appoint one person to serve as a member of a body to be called The International Council. The
International Council shall, within the regulations laid down by the international convention, be the governing body of the catalog. The International Council shall appoint its own chairman and secretary. It shall meet in London once in three years at least, and at such other times as the chairman, with the concurrence of five other members, may specially appoint. It shall, subject to the regulations laid down by the convention, be the supreme authority for the consideration of and decision concerning all matters belonging to the Central Bureau. It shall make a report of its doings, and submit a balance sheet, copies of which shall be distributed to the several Regional Bureaus, and published in some recognized periodical or periodicals in each of the constituent regions.'"
Library Journal, December, 1898.
The third international conference on a catalog of scientific literature was held in London, June 12, 1900, under the auspices of the Royal Society. "Unfortunately the United States finds no place in the list [of delegates]. This was owing to the failure to secure from Congress the necessary appropriation enabling the United States to join in the enterprise; and as the call to the conference required that delegates be charged with full powers, it was impossible for any representative of the United States to be in attendance. …
"The general results of the conference are reviewed by Professor Henry E. Armstrong, in 'Nature,' as follows: 'There can be little doubt that the ultimate execution of this important enterprise is now assured. … Everyone was of opinion that if a fair beginning can once be made, the importance of the work is so great; it will be of such use to scientific workers at large; that it will rapidly grow in favor and soon secure that wide support which is not yet given to it simply because its character and value are but imperfectly understood.
Therefore, all were anxious that a beginning should be made.
{449}
"'It has been estimated that if 300 sets or the equivalent are sold the expenses of publication will be fully met. As the purchase of more than half this number was guaranteed by France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, the conference came to the conclusion that the number likely to be taken by other countries would be such that the subscriptions necessary to cover the cost of the catalog would be obtained. The resolution arrived at after this opinion had been formed, That the catalog include both an author's and a subject index, according to the schemes of the Provisional International Committee, must, in fact, be read as a resolution to establish the catalog.
"'Of the countries represented at the various conferences, excepting Belgium, not one has expressed any unwillingness eventually to co-operate in the work. Unfortunately, neither the United States nor Russia was officially represented on the present occasion. The attempts that have been made to induce the government in the United States to directly subsidise the catalog have not been successful: but that the United States will contribute its fair share, both of material and pecuniary support, cannot be doubted. There as here private or corporate enterprise must undertake much that is done under government auspices in Europe. As to Russia, the organization of scientific workers there has been so little developed that it is very difficult to secure their attention, and probably our Russian colleagues are as yet but very imperfectly aware of what is proposed. … A Provisional International Committee has been appointed, which will take the steps now necessary to secure the adhesion and co-operation of countries not yet pledged to support the scheme.
"'Originally it was proposed to issue a card as well as a book
catalog, but on account of the great additional expense this would involve, and as the Americans in particular have not expressed themselves in favor of a card issue, it is resolved to publish the catalog, for the present, only in the form of annual volumes.
"'From the outset great stress has been laid on the preparation of subject indexes which go behind the titles of papers and give fairly full information as to the nature of their contents. Both at the first and the second International Conference this view met with the fullest approval. Meanwhile, the action of the German government has made it necessary to somewhat modify the original plan. In Germany, a regional bureau will be established, supported by a government subvention, and it is intended that the whole German scientific literature shall be cataloged in this office; no assistance will be asked from authors or editors or corporate bodies. In such an office it will for the present be impossible to go behind titles; consequently, only the titles of German papers will be quoted in the catalog. In the first instance, some other countries may prefer to adopt this course on the ground of economy. But in this country, at least, the attempt will be made to deal fully with the literature, and the co-operation of authors and editors will be specially invited. …
"'The catalog is to be published annually in seventeen distinct volumes. The collection of material is to commence from January 1, 1901. As it will be impossible to print and issue so many volumes at once, it is proposed to publish them in sets of four or five at quarterly intervals.'"
Library Journal, September, 1900.
The fourth Conference was held at London, December 12-13, 1900, when "all arrangements were completed for the definitive
commencement of the work on January 1. … The responsibility for publication and for the initial expenditure is undertaken by the Royal Society. … A comprehensive and elaborate system of classification has been devised with the assent of all the countries interested. This uniformity in a region where diversity of a perplexing kind has hitherto ruled is in itself a great boon to scientific workers everywhere. It may be anticipated that the scheme will by degrees be adopted in all collections of scientific works. As to the nothing aspects of this important undertaking, larger more need be said at present than that the scientific cataloguing of all scientific work most appropriately celebrates the opening of the twentieth century."
[Transcriber's note: In the previous sentence the words "nothing" and "larger" appear interchanged.]
London Times, December 14, 1900.
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE: In the Nineteenth Century.
See (in this volume)
NINETEENTH CENTURY: DOMINANT LINES.
----------Scientific Literature: End--------
----------SCOTLAND: Start--------
SCOTLAND: A. D. 1900.
Union of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches.
"In the ecclesiastical world only one event of the first importance has happened [in Scotland, in 1900], the consummation of the union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches, which has been the subject of
negotiation for six years past. The May meetings of the leading representative courts of the two denominations were occupied almost exclusively with the final arrangements for the formal act of union, which was fixed to take place on October 31. An attempt by a number of lay office-bearers of the Free Church to postpone the final step, on the ground that the congregations had not been directly and fairly consulted, failed of its object. On October 30 the General Assembly of the Free Church and the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church held their last meetings in Edinburgh as independent bodies. On the following day they formally constituted themselves the United Free Church of Scotland in the Waverley Market, the largest public hall in Scotland, in presence of an audience computed to number 6,000 persons. The union has, as is the rule in Scotland, been accompanied by a 'disruption.'
The minority of the Free Church, which on October 30 resolved to remain outside the United Free Church, is very small in number and is financially weak, but it claims to be the true Free Church of Scotland, it is asserting itself vigorously in the Highlands and islands, where Free Church 'constitutionalism' has always been strongest, and it has taken the first step in a process of litigation for the purpose of discovering whether it or the United Free Church is legally entitled to the property of the original Free Church founded in 1843. But for this secession, the strength of which is not accurately estimable, the new denomination would, according to the latest official returns, have opposed about 1,680 congregations and about 530,000 members to the 1,450 congregations and 650,000 members of the Church of Scotland."
London Times, December 27, 1900.
{450} SEA POWER.
See (in this volume) NAVIES OF THE SEA POWERS.
SEAL-KILLING DISPUTES.
See (in this volume) BERING SEA QUESTIONS.
SEGAN FU, SI-NGAN-FU, The Chinese Imperial Court at.
See (in this volume) CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).
SEMINOLES, United States Agreement with the.
See (in this volume) INDIANS, AMERICAN: A. D. 1893-1899.
SENEGAL; A. D. 1895. Under a French Governor-General.
See (in this volume) AFRICA: A. D. 1895 (FRENCH WEST AFRICA).
SENOUSSI, The Sect of the.
See (in this volume) NIGERIA: A. D. 1882-1899.
SERAPEION, Discovery of the.
See (in this volume) ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: EGYPT: DISCOVERY OF THE SERAPEION.
SERVIA: A. D. 1894-1901.
Abolition of the constitution by royal proclamation. Final exile and death of ex-King Milan.
See (in this volume)
BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES (SERVIA).
SERVIA: A. D. 1901 (April).
Promulgation of a new constitution.
A new constitution for Servia was promulgated by King Alexander, at Belgrade, on the 19th of April, 1901. Of the character of the instrument, the King had previously given intimations in an interview conceded to the editor of the "Revue d'Orient," the account of which, translated for the "London Times," is partly as follows: "Our three Constitutions of 1869, 1888, and 1901 differ from each other in important matters of principle. That of 1869 practically amounted to absolutism, if I may thus qualify any Constitution. It is true that the executive power retained but few prerogatives, but that was deceptive, as the rights of the Legislature were surrounded by exceptions and restrictions which made it easy to paralyse and annihilate them at any moment. The Constitution of 1888 had the contrary defects. It subordinated the executive power to that of the Legislature, only leaving to the former an altogether insufficient sphere of action. It had another great fault. It was excessively doctrinaire and theoretical, affecting to foresee everything and to regulate everything, so that the legislative power was bound hand and foot and could not legislate freely. The Constitution which will be promulgated on April 19, the anniversary of the day when the fortress of Belgrade was finally evacuated by the Turks in 1867, is a charter similar to those which organize the public powers in several countries of Europe, as, for instance, in England and in France. It settles the form of government, the powers of the King and of the State, the
rights of subjects, the working of the national representation, &c. But it leaves to the Legislature the settlement of all details. What more particularly distinguishes the Constitution of 1901 from that of 1869 is that it prevents the use and abuse of ordinances by the Executive, which will be obliged to frame special laws in every case that is to say, laws accepted and approved of by the King, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies. Thus legality will henceforth be the regulating wheel in the machinery of government. The Chamber of Deputies will be much better organized, as the enlightened classes will be much more numerously represented. The Constitution of 1901 will also present great advantages over that of 1888. The Legislature will control the acts of the Government as far as can possibly be desired. At the same time the constitutional regime as established in the new Constitution will give the King all the power that he ought to retain in a country that is still new, like Servia, without diminishing any of the inviolable liberties of the nation.
"I attach very great importance to the new political institution with which I am going to endow Servia namely, an Upper Chamber. Considering that it already exists, not only in monarchical countries, but also in most Republics, as, for instance, in France and the United States, I cannot admit that it should be regarded as involving the slightest aristocratic tendency or idea. I know my country well enough to be sure that I shall find a sufficient number of high-class politicians to recruit the Senate, and that enough will remain for the Chamber of Deputies. I am likewise fully persuaded that the legislative task of the Parliament will be much better performed when the Chamber of Deputies is conscious that above it there exists a Senate whose business it is to revise and improve the laws which it has elaborated, of course for the greater benefit of the nation. Then, again, the Senate will form a moderating element which was much wanting in our Legislature. What Servia is suffering from is not any lack of
