These clinical notes engage with the main points raised by Jacques Lacan in his seminar on 'Tuche and Automaton' that is featured in 'The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,' edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (London: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 53-56.

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CLINICAL NOTES
Jacques Lacan (1979). ‘Tuché and Automaton,’ The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, translated by Alan Sheridan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (London:
Penguin Books), pp. 53-56.
What does the term ‘cause’ mean in the work of Jacques Lacan? How does it relate to
the function of repetition?
In order to answer these important questions Lacan invokes the terms ‘tuché’ and
‘automaton’ from the physics of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle.
Lacan’s main point is that the notion of cause will elude our understanding unless
we realize that it emerges in the form of a repetition.
And, when it does, it is usually ‘overlooked’ by the patient who does not realize that
he is repeating. In fact, one of the many definitions of the unconscious in Lacan is
that it is a form of overlooking.
We overlook the emergence or the manifestations of the unconscious in everyday
life.
The unconscious is not something that is hidden in the depths of the human mind.
On the contrary, the Lacanian unconscious is outside.
It is on the surface; it is not something that the analyst has to search for. But even
though it is on the surface, we fail to notice it unless we are trained to do so.
That was the whole point of the theoretical discussions which centred round the
short story ‘The Purloined Letter’ by Edgar Allan Poe in which an important letter
went missing.
Nobody was able to find the letter. But the detective saw the letter at once on the
letter stand. The letter was exactly where a letter should be. But everybody expected the
letter to be somewhere else.

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So they did not look at the place that was really meant for the letter – the letter stand.
The reason that nobody else was able to find the letter relates to the fact that they
expected the letter to have been hidden somewhere. But as an experienced detective,
Dupin understood that the best way to hide something is not to hide it.
Likewise, the analyst knows that the unconscious is not hidden somewhere. It is
there on the surface of the patient’s free-associations.
If we get taken in by depth-models of the unconscious, we will not be able to retrieve
the missing letter in the unconscious.
The Lacanian unconscious makes itself known on the surface; the analyst is he who
by definition will be able to retrieve the missing letter.
So when Lacan invokes the relationship between cause and repetition, it does not
involve searching through into the depths of causation and repetition in the psyche.
Hence, the Lacanian formulation that whatever is repeated occurs ‘as if by chance’ in
the life of the subject. That is why it escapes the notice of the inexperienced.
So, for instance, the patient will miss a session and have a compelling reason for not
showing up. Exploring the reasons will throw up the reason that is implicated in a
pattern of repetition.
It is however not obvious to the patient that he finds himself repeating. On the
contrary, the well-intentioned patient wanted to miss the session because he was
convinced that he was not repeating.
The excuse for skipping the session emerges in the life of the subject as an
unavoidable contingency; it emerges ‘as if by chance.’
Or, if it emerges as though through a sense of necessity, then, the patient experiences
it as though it were truly contingent. That is why in analysis the analyst does not
meekly accept the excuses proffered by the patient.
Another commonly invoked form of repetition is a woman patient who is married to
a number of husbands – all of whom die after she marries them and put her through
the agony of having to nurse them before they do so.
A woman who repeats like that is not perversely marrying without any awareness of
her symptom. But the symptomatic pattern repeats itself despite her best attempts to
avoid it. Freud used the term ‘fate neurosis’ for patients like that.

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Melodramas and soap operas thrive on characters who are either masochistic or who
have a fate neurosis. In either case, it is the chronic suffering of such characters that
holds the viewer spell-bound.
These characters are in the grip of a repetition compulsion from which they are not
able to distance themselves. They feel hounded by what they term ‘fate’ or
‘misfortune.’
In order to understand the concept of fate in traditional societies or even in modern
societies, we have to realize that alerting the patient to a pattern of repetition will not
lead to a cure.
It might even be counter-productive to do so and make it difficult to free the patient.
That is why Lacanians prefer to interrupt the symptom rather than interpret the
symptom.
Using the technique of the variable session to ‘punctuate’ or ‘scand’ the behaviour of
the patient is much more likely to cut the symptom and release the patient’s energies
for more productive use.
It is important to understand that the Freudian concept of the death instinct is
related to the problems of acting-out and repetition.
It is not possible to stop a patient from acting-out or repeating his symptom by
merely telling him that he is on the verge of doing so.
Another extreme form of acting out is the ‘passage to the act’ – i.e. suicide. An
important problem for those working in this area is how and what they should do to
prevent suicides. Both acting out and passage to the act are difficult to prevent.
There are instances in analysis when patients either act-out or kill themselves. This is
an occupational hazard that analysts cannot avoid.
It is therefore important for an analyst to be trained in such a way that he is able to
anticipate these events. The basic approach in Lacanian analysis is to relate these
instances to the need for non-evaluative forms of listening in the analytic clinic.
The immediate provocation for acting-out and passage to the act on the part of the
patient is the feeling that the analyst is not really listening.
Listening skills can quite literally save a patient’s life or at least prevent him from
irreparably damaging his reputation by acting-out.

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The libidinal economy of repetition is compulsive in its orientation. That is, in compulsive
phenomena, the patient is not able to identify the limits within which an act should
be performed.
When the patient’s approach to such acts becomes ‘uneconomical,’ the analyst has
good reason to believe that the patient is on the verge of acting-out.
Sometimes the compulsive element comes from the fact that the patient knows he has
acted-out, but is not able to undo the damage that he has inflicted on himself or
significant others in his life.
In other words, compulsive actions can relate to either the self or the other.
That is why what Lacan has to teach us in this seminar on the relationship between
tuché and automaton is important.
The term tuché is defined as ‘the encounter with the real.’
It constitutes the structure of trauma as such. Every trauma necessarily partakes of
such an encounter which the subject is not able to work-through on his own.
That is why the patient seeks the help of the analyst.
It is trauma then that constitutes the causal factor in analysis. The only question in
any given case is whether the trauma is an empirical event or a strong fantasy.
Even an unexpected hallucination can serve the function of a trauma.
Encountering the ghost of his dead father on the ramparts of Denmark is a specific
instance of tuché in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Does it really matter whether the ghost really appeared before Hamlet or whether it
was ‘just’ a hallucination?
In either case it is traumatic. In either case, it is an ‘encounter with the real’ of
Hamlet’s own ambivalent desire for the death of his father.
What then is the automaton?
The automaton is akin to the pleasure principle.
The real however is ‘beyond the pleasure principle.’ It is that which cannot be fully
subsumed by the pleasure principle.
That is why the real of acting-out and repetition are implicated in the death instinct.

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When the subject finds himself beyond the ambit of the pleasure principle, he knows
that death in inevitable. He is not in denial about the death instinct anymore.
Hence, the need to relate tuché with the automaton.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN