“History is not the Past”: Lacan's Critique of Ferenczi

In the introductory remarks to “The Signification of the Phallus,” a lecture originally delivered at the Max-Planck Institute in Munich, Lacan (1958b) allows himself a moment of self-congratulation. Looking back briefly on his achievements, he notes that he was the first to rescue (”reprendre” is his word) Freud's concept of deferred action (Nachträglichkeit) from the neglect into which it had fallen in psychoanalytic circles: “it should be known that they [these terms] were unheard of at that time” (p. 281). Lacan again underscores his retrieval of this concept during his seminar on The Four Fundamental Concept of Pscho-Analysis (1964):

When I said, at the beginning of these talks — I do not seek, I find, I meant that, in Freud's field, one has only to bend down and pick up what is to be found. The real implication of the nachlraglich, for example, has been ignored, though it was there all the time and had only to be picked up. (p. 216)

In echoing Christ's promissory injunction “seek, and ye shall find,” Lacan unhesitatingly distinguishes his rediscovery of the truth first revealed by Freud from those who have followed in Freud's path with a lesser degree of vision. The allusion to the Sermon on the Mount may also be intended to recall — and Lacan is often most invested where he is most allusive — the response that Christ's sayings elicited: “[T]he people were astonished at his doctrine. For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:7, 28-29). Priority is bound up here with the authority of a teaching, with its preeminence over that of other scribes or scribblers.