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I have elected to speak today about the following three notions: logic, imagination, reflection. Before doing that, however, permit me a few words concerning the title of this colloquium.
“The Unconscious and Science” can be read in two ways. I will not be speaking about the Unconscious as an object of science; I will touch upon it, in fact, only indirectly. But there is another aspect, which we can formulate as follows: How, generally speaking, is a science possible, if human beings are essentially defined by the existence of the Unconscious, if they are, as Roger Dorey has recalled, split. How, under these conditions, is a science of the Unconscious possible—that is to say, how is psychoanalysis itself possible?
The classic response to the question concerning the possibility of science is this: the fact that man is a logical animal (he has or is logos, understanding, reason, etc.) is what makes science possible. Man is zoon logon echon. And Freud himself, in a celebrated passage, evokes “our God Logos,” which would be, perhaps, for him the ultimate culmination of a phylogenetic process—that is, a biologically acquired property.
My response will be entirely different. Perhaps it would have aroused Freud's indignation, but I believe it is faithful to the nerve center of his inspiration and research. First let me summarize it so as to provide a guiding thread through the labyrinthine intricacies of what will follow. Simply put, logic is what we share with animals—even with living beings