Postface*

To conclude, a few theoretical points and a few hypotheses. At the end of this work, I cannot help feeling that many of the problems raised remain in suspense and that much of what I have said may call for a fresh examination.

Here are a few of the questions that the work has reflected afterwards on the reflection that has produced it: the end of a piece of writing is not its closure, but the revelation of the point from which it ought to have set out.

Let me refer to the shared experience of psychoanalytic practice. The fact that the mainspring of what takes place in psychoanalysis is put into operation by the combined effects of the speech of analysand and analyst has given rise to controversy in discussions among psychoanalysts. For reasons that cannot be analysed here, such discussions have often taken the form of a double monologue, rather than of a dialogue. It may be of the nature of speech that it is split and divided into a double locus, without there being any need for the two parts to be joined together. This evocative image of the topographical relations of the psychical apparatus is striking enough, but it may well hinder a recognition of the question of speech in psychoanalysis. One must not be afraid to remind oneself of the evidence; it will bring us closer to the heart of the question than a premature theoretical development.

Analytic speech is speech delivered lying down. This is a paradoxical position, associated with sleep, relaxation, idleness or making love, but scarcely with speech. Second, analytic speech is speech addressed to a hidden addressee. Contravening the rules of verbal exchange, which is usually delivered face to face, analytic speech reaches its addressee in recurrent mode, as a result of his or her position and silence. But this mode

has a double consequence: on the one h