Jacques-Alain Miller

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Jacques-Alain Jacques-Alain Miller

Miller
(French: [milɛʁ];
born 14
February 1944)
is a
psychoanalyst
and writer. He is
one of the
founder
members of the
École de la
Cause
14 February 1944 (age 77)
freudienne Born
Châteauroux, France
(School of the
Freudian Ecole Normale Superieure
Alma mater
Cause) and the University of Paris VIII
World Occupation Psychoanalyst
Association of Years active 1960–present
Psychoanalysis
Part of a series of articles on
which he
presided from Psychoanalysis

1992 to 2002.
He is the sole
editor of the
books of The
Seminars of
Jacques Lacan.

Contents show

1 Life and Concepts

career Psychosexual development
1.1 1960s Psychosocial development (Erikson)
1.2 1970s Unconscious
1.3 1980s
Preconscious
1.4 1990s
Consciousness
1.5 2000s
1.6 2010– Psychic apparatus

present Id, ego and super-ego

2 Selected Libido
works Drive
3 References
Transference
3.1 Sources
Countertransference
4 External links
Ego defenses
Life and Resistance
career Projection
Denial
1960s
Dreamwork
Miller's career
show
began early,
interviewing Important figures
Jean-Paul Karl Abraham
Sartre in 1960 Alfred Adler
when he was Michael Balint
sixteen years
Wilfred Bion
old[citation
Josef Breuer
needed]. Atthe Nancy Chodorow
time he was in Max Eitingon
khâgne at the Erik Erikson
Lycée Louis-le-
Ronald Fairbairn
Grand and
Paul Federn
studying Latin
in private Otto Fenichel

classes with Sándor Ferenczi

Jean-Louis Anna Freud
Laugier who Sigmund Freud
gave him "the
Erich Fromm
desire to be a
Harry Guntrip
Normalien".[1]
Karen Horney
In 1962, he Edith Jacobson
entered the
Ernest Jones
École Normale
Carl Jung
Supérieure
where he Abram Kardiner

studied with Heinz Kohut

Louis Althusser. Melanie Klein
There he Jacques Lacan
befriended
Ronald Laing
fellow students
Jean Laplanche
who would also
Margaret Mahler
go on to leave a
lasting mark on Jacques-Alain Miller
intellectual life Sandor Rado
in France: Otto Rank
Étienne Balibar, Wilhelm Reich
Pierre
Joan Riviere
Macherey,
Isidor Sadger
François
Regnault, Ernst Simmel

Robert Linart Sabina Spielrein

and Jean- Wilhelm Stekel
Claude Milner. James Strachey
At the ENS he
Harry Stack Sullivan
attended the
Susan Sutherland Isaacs
seminars of
Roland Barthes, Donald Winnicott

the "first writer Slavoj Žižek

with whom I
had a close
show
friendship".[2]
At this time he Important works
also met the The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
young Derrida The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
who was Three Essays on the Theory
lecturing at the of Sexuality (1905)
Sorbonne. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

In 1963, The Ego and the Id (1923)

Althusser
show
assigned Miller Schools of thought
the task of Adlerian
reading "all of Ego psychology
Lacan" and
Jungian
Miller carried
Lacanian
out the task
admiringly. The Interpersonal

following year, Intersubjective

Jacques Lacan Marxist
was appointed Object relations
lecturer at the
Reichian
École Pratique
Relational
des Hautes
Etudes and Self psychology

transferred his
Seminar to the
show
ENS. Miller's
Training
encounter with
Lacan was to Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis
be a decisive
one: he British Psychoanalytic Council
contributed to British Psychoanalytical Society
the Seminar Columbia University Center for
first with Psychoanalytic Training and Research
questions, then International Psychoanalytical Association
with full texts World Association of Psychoanalysis
over the
following years. List of schools of psychoanalysis
Over the
summer break show
of 1964, Lacan See also
invited Miller to Child psychoanalysis
his country Depth psychology
house, La
Psychodynamics
Prévôté in
Psychoanalytic theory
Guitrancourt,
where Miller
read the Psychology portal
transcriptions
of Lacan's early v
seminars. t
During a later
e
stay at
Guitrancourt, Miller began a relationship with Judith Lacan,
Lacan's daughter, whom he married in 1966. The index of
concepts and the commentary on the graphs in Lacan's
1966 Écrits were drawn up by Miller, and in that same year,
he founded Cahiers pour l'Analyse, a seminal publication
whose editorial board included Alain Grosrichard, Regnault,
Milner and, later, Alain Badiou.

Miller's written texts from this early period are published in

the Gallimard collection, Un début dans la vie (2002) which
includes his interview with Sartre and the influential text
presented at Lacan's Seminar (24 February 1965), "Suture:
Elements of the Logic of the Signifier".

1970s

After a period of active involvement in the leftwing

movements associated with May 1968, Miller was
encouraged by Lacan to take "another path by which to get
your privileged revolt across: mine for example".[3] In time
Miller would become instrumental in Lacan's École
Freudienne de Paris, founding and editing the journal
Ornicar ? which published lessons of Lacan's Seminar. When
Lacan moved to the University of Vincennes—the
Department of Psychoanalysis was renamed "Le Champ
freudien"—Lacan became its director, and Michel Foucault
appointed Jacques-Alain Miller president.[4]

Miller's teaching from this period (1972-1978) took on the

name L'Orientation lacanienne and gave rise to published
texts on Bentham, Peirce and Church.

In 1973, Miller transcribed at Lacan's behest the 1964

Seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis which was to lead to a lifelong commitment
to establishing the full series of Lacan's annual Parisian
Seminar. Book XI was published by Seuil in 1973, with Books
I & Book XX following in 1975 and Book II in 1978.
Miller also contributed in 1973 to the two-part televised
programme that later became known as "Television", leading
Lacan to credit Miller by saying "He who interrogates me /
also knows how to read me".

1980s

Lacan's dissolution of the EFP in 1980 was followed by the

creation of La cause freudienne. Soon thereafter Lacan died,
leaving Miller as the sole editor of his seminars.

Miller resumed his weekly seminars in 1980, thus opening

the series known as L'Orientation lacanienne II. Dedicated to
expounding and elucidating Lacan's work, Miller's course
was attended by many influential figures in psychoanalytic
theory, notably Éric Laurent and Slavoj Zizek. The Lacanian
Orientation course went under the banner of a "return to the
clinic"[5] and early themes included "From the Symptom to
the Fantasy" (1982-3), "The Differential Clinic of Psychoses"
(1987-8 DEA seminar), and "Traits of Perversion" (1988-9).

The 1980s were also a period of extensive travel in Europe

and Latin America to consolidate the emerging communities
of Lacan's students and adherents, culminating in the
founding of the European School of Psychoanalysis in 1990
(now the European Federation of the Schools of the WAP)
and the Argentine Escuela de la Orientación Lacaniana in
1992.
Over this decade, Miller established Book III and Book VII of
Lacan's Seminar. Miller's 1980s lectures in Buenos Aires are
collected in Tome I of Conferencias Porteñas (Paidos, 2010).

1990s

In the early nineties, Miller's work began to be translated into

English and published in the United States through the
Newsletter of the Freudian Field and the New York-based
cultural journal Lacanian Ink under the editorship of Josefina
Ayerza.

In 1992, Miller launched the World Association of

Psychoanalysis which grouped together the École de la
Cause freudienne, the European School of Psychoanalysis,
and the Escuela de la Orientación Lacaniana, and soon
thereafter oversaw the creation of Schools in Brazil, Spain
and Italy which were likewise included in the WAP.

The end of the decade saw a "thaw" in relations with the IPA
thanks to the efforts of its then President Horacio
Etchegoyen.[6] Miller was invited to attend the 1997 IPA
Congress in Barcelona where his remarks from the floor were
greeted with warm applause.[7]

In 1995, Miller's weekly course moved to the Paul-Painlevé

Amphitheatre at the Conservatoire National des Arts et
Métiers, where it would continue until his retirement from
University Paris-VIII in 2009. In 1998, his teaching entered its
third phase as L'Orientation lacanienne III. The Buenos Aires
lectures of the 1989-1996 period are collected in Tome II of
Conferencias Porteñas (Paidos, 2009). The nineteen nineties
also saw the publication of Book IV, Book V and Book XVII of
Lacan's Seminar, established by Miller.

2000s

After two decades devoted exclusively to training analysts

and furthering worldwide institutional links, alongside the
ongoing transcription of Lacan’s Seminar, 2001 saw a return
to the public stage Miller had occupied in the late sixties. In
June 2001, the journal of the SPP published an article that
contained false and misleading information on Miller and the
École de la Cause freudienne. When his request to have a
short note published, rectifying the factual elements, was
refused by the journal’s editor, Miller turned to "enlightened
public opinion" to state his case, publishing a first letter on 3
September 2001. Its enthusiastic reception by France’s
intellectual community gave rise to five further letters[8]
which look in detail at the issues surrounding Lacan’s 1963
"excommunication" from the IPA and the history of the
psychoanalytic movement over the four ensuing decades.
The third letter, penned in the wake of the September 11
attacks, also offers a reflection on terrorism and political
action.
In 2003, Miller founded the New Lacanian School, which
groups together the societies from the UK, Belgium,
Switzerland, Israel, and Greece along with affiliated groups
from Ireland and Eastern Europe. In the same year he
published the satirical Neveu de Lacan (Verdier) in response
to the 2002 pamphlet by Daniel Lindenberg, Le Rappel à
l’ordre.

In October 2003, the French government passed a bill

intended to regulate, for the first time, the practice of
psychotherapy in France.[9] Voted in following a late-night
parliamentary session that was preceded by little discussion
with the professionals concerned, Miller alerted public
opinion in another letter, published on 17 November,
addressed to the UMP politician Bernard Accoyer. Over the
following months, Miller spearheaded the movement
dedicated to increasing both public and professional
awareness of the issues at stake, prompting Bernard-Henri
Lévy to write: "Sometimes history hangs on a thread. It is
quite likely that in this affair the thread bears the name of
this one man: Jacques-Alain Miller".[10] The action of the
Forums that assembled under Miller’s impulsion ultimately
led to the revision of the Bill.

The transcription of Lacan’s Seminar continued, with Book

VIII (Second Edition), Book X, Book XXIII, Book XVI and Book
XVIII all appearing in this decade. In 2008, at the time of the
sixth WAP Congress, Miller delivered a lecture before a 1,
700 strong audience at the Teatro Coliseo. This lecture is
transcribed alongside his 1996-2001 Argentine lectures
collected in Tome III of Conferencias Porteñas (Paidos,
2010). At this time, he also became a regular guest-
contributor to France Culture radio and French news
magazines such as Marianne and Le Point. A selection of his
public articles was collected as Le secret des dieux (2005)
and in 2008, he took part in the “Rally of the Impossible
Professions” in London, speaking alongside Richard
Gombrich and Michael Power. In 2009, he founded Hurly-
Burly, the International Lacanian Journal of Psychoanalysis.
[11][12]

2010–present

Miller's 2009-2010 course, delivered at the Théâtre Déjazet,

was dedicated to Lacan's life, examining links between
Lacan's psychoanalytic ethics and biographical details that
Miller had not previously related in public. The course was
later partially written up and published as Vie de Lacan
(2011).

Miller's ongoing psychoanalytic teaching is regularly

translated into English, as are his frequent articles and
interviews on current events.

Book XIX of the Seminar of Jacques Lacan appeared in 2011

and Book VI in 2013.

Selected works
Culture/Clinic 1: Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis,
University of Minnesota Press, Saint Paul, 2013,
ISBN 0816683190.
First Letter Addressed by Jacques-Alain Miller To an
Enlightened Public, New York: The Wooster Press,
2002. ISBN 1888301996.
Clear Like Day Letter for the twenty years since the
death of Jacques Lacan written by Jacques-Alain Miller
To an Enlightened Public, New York: The Wooster Press,
2001. ISBN 1888301988.
The Tenderness of Terrorists and Other Letters written
by Jacques-Alain Miller To an Enlightened Public, New
York: The Wooster Press, 2002. ISBN 188830197X.
"Introduction to Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on
Anxiety I ", New York: Lacanian Ink 26, Fall 2005.
"Introduction to Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on
Anxiety II", New York: Lacanian Ink 27, Spring 2006.
"Jacques Lacan's Later Teachings", New York: Spring
Lacanian Ink 21, 2003.
"The Paradigms of Jouissance" New York, Lacanian Ink
17, Fall 2000.
"Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier", Lacan
Dot Com, The Symptom 2006.
 "Religion, Psychoanalysis", Lacanian Ink 23, Spring
2004.
"Pure Psychoanalysis, Applied Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy", Lacanian Ink 20, Spring 2002.
The pathology of democracy: a letter to Bernard
Accoyer and to enlightened opinion (2005), Karnac
Books.
Five Lessons on Language and the Real (1997) in Hurly-
Burly, Issue 7, May 2012, pp. 59–118.

References
1. Miller, J.-A. The Tenderness of Terrorists.
2. Jacques-Alain Miller interviewed by M. Quenehen on
France Culture Radio, 17 October 2011.
3. Regnault, F., "I Was Struck by What You Said..." Hurly-
Burly 6 p.25.
4. Macey, D., The Lives of Michel Foucault p.223.
5. Miller, J.-A. "We Are Haphazardly Driven from Pillar to
Post" in Hurly-Burly 5 p.28.
6. Miller, J.-A. & Etchegoyen, H., Silence brisé : entretien
sur le mouvement psychanalytique, Navarin, 1996.
7. Published in French in the Revue de la Cause
freudienne.
8. Collected in 2002 by Seuil as Lettres à l'opinion
éclairée, the first three letters were published in
English-language translation by the Wooster Press
 (2001)
9. Grigg, R. Regulating Psychoanalysis: Why We Should
Be Concerned Over the New Psychotherapy Legislation
in France, in The Pathology of Democracy, Karnac
Books, p.61
10. "Introduction" to Aflalo, A., L'Assassinat manqué de la
psychanalyse Cécile Defaut.
11. Svolos, T., "Reading Hurly-Burly Late into the Night"
Archived 2014-10-09 at the Wayback Machine in
Lacanian Compass, 14 p. 45.
12. This remark was reiterated by Joel Goldbach in his
review of Hurly-Burly Issue 2 in Umbr(a): Writing, 2010,
p. 144.

Sources

Miller, Jacques-Alain. (1985). Entretien sur Le séminaire

avec François Ansermet. Paris: Diffusion, Seuil. OCLC
013291639
Miller, Jacques-Alain. (2002). Un début dans la vie.
Paris: Gallimard. ISBN 9782070764952; OCLC
49567940

External links
École de la Cause Freudienne
Les Cahiers pour l'Analyse
Lacan dot com
Articles in Lacanian Ink
Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier
A Critical Reading of Jacques Lacan's "Les Complexes
Familiaux"
Objects a in Analytic Experience
Enigmatized Coitus: A Reading of Borges
On "Rerum Novarum"
Bibliography in English
Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety - I
Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety - II
Jacques-Alain Miller Live Twenty Lectures at France-
Culture - Summer 2005

show

v
t
e

Presidents of the World Association of

Psychoanalysis
Jacques-Alain Miller (1992)
Graciela Brosky (2002)
Éric Laurent (2006)
Leonardo Gorostiza (2010)
Miquel Bassols (2014)