Seminar 5. 15 July 1977. The Italian Seminars

I don't know “us”, and I don't think that we know “us” either, because we – whoever we are – have not met before. We are none of us who we were even an hour ago, so I shall start by having a speculative imagination, something that is not a fact, an imaginary fact. When there are a lot of individuals here, there are also a lot of thoughts without a thinker, and these thoughts-without-a-thinker are floating around somewhere. I suggest that they are looking for a thinker. I hope that some of you will be prepared to allow them a lodgement in your minds or personalities. I realize that that is asking a lot, because these thoughts-without-a-thinker, these stray thoughts, are liable also to be wild thoughts. And nobody likes giving a home to wild thoughts which are then said to be your thoughts. We all like our thoughts to be domesticated; we like them to be civilized thoughts, well-trained, rational thoughts. All the same, however wild, however irrational, these thoughts may be, I hope that you will dare to give them a temporary lodgement and that you will then provide them with a suitable verbal costume so that they can express themselves publicly and be given an airing even if they do not appear to be very well fitted out. I hope that these speculative imaginations will have a chance of achieving a certain degree of respectability, so that they can exist even in a scientific community. Like speculative reasons, they are feeble creatures, easily destroyed.

I find from time to time a patient who says that he is incapable of imagination. In such circumstances I am not surprised if that same person complains of insomnia. Such people are afraid that they will be off their guard as they are when they go to sleep. When they are able to go to sleep and to have dreams, they say they have had a dream because a dream is relatively respectable; we are permitted

to have dreams. It is not regarded as quite so respectable to have an hallucination or a delusion, although sometimes th