The Mystery of "Passe"

Abstract:

This article analyzes how the philosopher Alain Badiou describes a process invented by Lacan, la passe, the pass—a procedure for deciding whether or not to admit to his student analysands about to complete their analysis. By deconstructing Badiou’s text, the author shows how the philosopher ascribes a sacramental presupposition to the pass, understood as a Catholic sacrament or mystical mystery. The author criticises a kind of dogmatic worship of psychoanalysis into which many philosophers fall, and shows how this uncritical belief in the sacramental effectiveness of psychoanalysis—and the cult of Freud’s work as a Revelation—fails to help psychoanalysis to improve in any way, but rather shuts it down in a narcissistic self-satisfaction. Instead, psychoanalysis lives of its own deconstruction.