Toward Reading Lacan: Pages for a Workbook: Chapter 3: The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis

In September 1953, Lacan delivered his famous “Discourse at Rome.” Originally it had been scheduled as a “theoretical report” by the president of the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP) to an annual congress of psychoanalysts. Traditionally, this congress included only analysts of the French tongue, but it was extended to include those of all the romance languages—and of Dutch besides (1977, p. 30/237). In the previous June, however, Lacan had been forced to resign as president of the SPP, ostensibly because of the unorthodoxy of his treatment methods, but more profoundly because of his deep opposition to the rigidly formalistic training program then being developed for a new psychoanalytic institute in Paris. This institute, headed by S. Nacht, would presumably shape the future members of the SPP. Be that as it may, Lacan's resignation was followed by that of several other important members of the SPP (notably Daniel Lagache, who as vice-president of the society refused to succeed Lacan, the departing president). Thus the psychoanalysts who eventually met in Rome in September to hear Lacan were very much a splinter group for which Lacan now became the acknowledged leader and spo