But despite the vibrancy of this homage, the beauty of whose writing remains ravishing, Lacan’s relationship to Freud was never uniform. It took the form of a broad range of formulations, strung together by the thread of the complexity of the transmission that took place from the One to the Other. If he saw him “at his best” (à la bonne)—a colloquial term which he was fond of—, Lacan also “kept an eye on him” (à l’oeil).
Transference is capable of changing greatly, both in intensity and depending on the time—and of this Lacan bore witness with great lucidity.
It is said that he saw his link to Freud as a “negative transference”, and indeed he didn’t restrain himself from making certain statements in this sense.
This, for anyone who reads Lacan, is obvious proof. And moreover, how can one imagine that flamboyant Lacan, the lover of women, the man of a thousand lives, the friend of Surrealists, obsessed with speed and beautiful cars, might have had a good opinion of the homebound mode of jouissance of the indoors man that was Freud?
He deplored Freud’s dependence on his wife — which he termed “uxorious” —, his attachment to Marie Bonaparte, his occasional authoritarianism, and many other traits; and said so publicly and unambiguously, making clear, sometimes with a bit of sarcasm, the difference between their respective jouissances.
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