TOPOGRAPHICAL

POINT OF VIEW

Bibliography
` Valabrega, Jean-Paul. (1999). Trente an apres. . .Entretien avec Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor. Topique, 69.

TOPOGRAPHICAL POINT OF VIEW

Like the economic and the dynamic points of view, the topographical point of view is one of the three main dimensions of Freuds metapsychology. It introduced the idea that the mental apparatus was composed of different areas of the mind, different territories governed by different processes. The idea of a mental topography was present in Freuds thought as early as the Project for a Scientific Psychology of 1895 (1950c), where it arose as a direct consequence of his conception of the history and successive stages of construction of the psychical apparatus. In Freuds first topographical approach, three mental regions were distinguished: the conscious, the location of ideas that had direct access to consciousness; the preconscious, the location of material susceptible of becoming conscious fairly easily; and the unconscious, the location of whatever had been repressed from consciousness and was thus inaccessible to it. This initial spatial organization of the mind, known as the first topography, later proved inadequate for dealing with the clinical view of pathological narcissism, for it failed to locate the ego or the internalization of values and principles acquired in the course of the individuals development. Beginning with Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g) and especially in The Ego and the Id (1923b), Freud proposed a new topography of the mental personality and apparatus in terms of the id, the ego, and the superego. The unconscious per se could no longer be treated as a single location in the psyche, for there were in fact several unconscious realms, and of different kinds. From then on, the term unconscious was used only as a qualifier applicable to mental processes, irrespective of their topographical location. A portion of the ego and of the superego were thus said to be unconscious, while components of the id could not become conscious without being transformed into representations, their original forms remaining unconscious. The second topography did not replace the first, however. Rather, it remained in a dialectical relationship with it, thus complicating the model as a whole.
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Some French psychoanalysts have taken the view that the two topographies are not merely metapsychological constructs but also correspond to specific organizational modes of the psyche. Different ways of mental functioning could thus be described in terms of the first or second topography, and the metapsychological account remained closely bound up with clinical practice.
RENE ROUSSILLON

See also: Agency; Censorship; Consciousness; Ego; Ego and the Id, The; Excitation; Id; Metapsychology; Model; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; PerceptionConsciousness (Pcpt.-Cs.); Preconscious, the; Psychic apparatus; Regression; Structural theories; Superego; The Unconscious; Unconscious, the; Wish, hallucinatory satisfaction of a.

Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. (1915d). Repression. SE, 14: 141158. . (1920g). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 164. . (1923b). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 166. . (1950c [1895]). Project for a scientific psychology. SE, 1: 281387. Roussillon, Rene. (1995). La metapsychologie des processus et la transitionnalite. Revue francaise de psychanalyse, 59, 13511519.

Further Reading
Paniagua, Cecilio. (2001). The attraction of topographical technique. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82, 671684.

TOPOLOGY
Topology refers primarily to the branch of mathematics that rigorously treats questions of neighborhoods, limits, and continuity. Psychoanalysts have applied it to the study of unconscious structures. In what have been called his two topographies (the first dating from 1900 and the second from 1923), Freud resorted to schemas to represent the various parts of the psychic apparatus and their interrelations. These schemas implicitly posited an equivalence between psychic and Euclidean space.
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FIGURE 1

created by the cut is closed after a second trip around a fictional axis. The difference of the signifier from itself is indicated by the difference between the two trips around the loop (Figure 1). 2. The Mobius Strip and Interpretation
The Double Loop

Early on, Jacques Lacan noted that the limitations of such a naive topology had restricted Freudian theory, not only in the description of the psychic apparatus (a description that in the end required an appeal to the economic point of view), but also in the specificity of clinical structures. The hypothesis that the unconscious is structured like a language, that is, in two dimensions, led Lacan to the topology of surfaces. The concept of foreclosure, for example, which he constructed on the basis of this topology, confirmed the heuristic value of his approach. In his seminar Identification (19611962), Lacan unveiled a collection of topological objectssuch as the torus, the Mobius strip, and the cross-capthat served pedagogical aims. But already he saw them as more than just models. With the Borromean knot, introduced in 1973, he took the position that these objects were a real presentation of the subject and not just a representation. Below are several of Lacans topological objects. 1. The Cut and the Signifier Far from being given a priori, every space is organized on the basis of cuts and can actually be considered as a cut in the space of a higher dimension. We are familiar with the subjective impact of this: The events of our lives only become history through the castration complex, which organizes our reality at the price of an imaginary cutting off of the penis. According to Freud, by introjecting a single trait of another, the subject identifies with the other (at the price of losing this person as a love object). In the single trait Lacan found the very structure of the signifier: A cut allows the lost object to fall away. He called this cut the unary trait. The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure insisted on the fundamentally negative, purely differential character of the signifier. Lacan formalized this property in the double loop, or interior eight, in which the gap
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If a signifier represents the subject for another signifier, then the subject would be supported by a surface whose edge would be a signifying cut. Note that the planethe usual screen for the subjects images, figures, and dreams, that is, plansis a surface that does not meet these conditions. The double loop cannot be drawn on a plane without showing a cut. The same is true of a sphere, a simple representation of the universe. The Mobius strip, on the other hand, can represent this cut and symbolize the subject of the unconscious. Since a Mobius strip only has one surface, it is possible to pass from one side to the other without crossing over any edgean apt representation of the return of the repressed. The Mobius strip also has certain other peculiarities. A cut that runs one-third from the edge and parallel to the edge divides the strip into a two-sided strip linked to what remains of the original Mobius strip. But if this cut is made in the center, it does not divide the Mobius strip in two. Instead, the entire strip is transformed into a strip with two sides. This characteristic illustrates the equivalence between the Mobius strip (the subject) and the medial cut that transforms it, and also provides a model of how interpretation functions. Interpretation does not abolish the unconscious. On the contrary, it makes the unconscious real for the subject by its transformed appearance as another (an Other) surface (figure 2).
FIGURE 2
1st cut 2nd cut

1st cut The Mbius Strip

2nd cut (interpretation)

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FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4

A A A A B A B A B Identity A A

B Union B A B

Identity A A

Union A B A or B

Intersection A B A and B

Non-identity AVB either A or B but not both

Intersection A B

Symmetrical Difference AVB AVB

Venn Diagrams

The same operations on the torus. Only symmetrical difference is preserved.

FIGURE 5

D D

empty

nothing d

D demand d desire

The trajectory of demand, D.

The double loop on the torus.

FIGURE 6
Torus of the Other

On the torus, only symmetrical difference is consistent. Thus we have a demonstration of how the signifier can be different from all other signifiers and also from itself. Lacan also used the torus to represent the subject as the subject of demand. In this sense, the torus can be conceived as the surface created by the iteration of the trajectory of the subjects demand. This trajectory turns around two different empty spaces, one that is internal, D, the lack created in the real by speech, and one that is central, d, corresponding to the place of the elusive object of desire that the drive goes around before completing the loop (Figure 5). For every torus, there is a complementary torus, and the empty spaces of the two are the inverse of each other. Lacan made this structure of complementary toruses the support of the neurotic illusion that makes the demand of the Other the object of subjects desire and, conversely, makes the desire of the Other the object of subjects demand. This structure also arises from the fact that on a torus, the signifying cut (the double loop) does not detach any fragment. Neurotic subjects, insofar as they give in to neurosis, insofar as they are in the torus, are not organized around their
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Torus of the subject Two complimentary toruses: The subject takes the others demands as the object of his or her desire.

3. The Torus Lacan made different uses of the torus. By drawing Venn diagrams, traditionally used to illustrate basic logical operations, on the surface of the torus, he demonstrated the extent to which our thinking depends upon the plane surface, and he also provided another possible basis for the logic of the unconscious (Figure 3). By inscribing the same circles on the surface of the torus, Lacan revealed the logic of the unconscious discovered by Freud (Figure 4).
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FIGURE 7

On a cross-cap

a cut with two openings

produces a single-sided surface ( a Mbius strip)

and a disk.

own castration, but instead excuse themselves by substituting the Others demand for the object of their fantasy (figure 6). 4. The Cross-Cap The cross-cap, or more precisely, the projective plane, can represent the subject of desire in relation to the lost object. A double loop drawn on its surface in effect divides this single-sided surface into two heteroge neous parts: a Mobius strip representing the subject and a disk representing object a, the cause of desire. The disk is centered on a point that is related to the irreducible singularity of this surface, which Lacan identified with the phallus. Unlike the representation of the subject produced on the torus, here a single cut, which symbolizes castration, produces both the subject and the object in its divisions (figure 7). 5. The Borromean Knot Introduced by Lacan in 1973, the Borromean knot is the solution to a problem perceivable only in Lacanian theory but having extremely practical clinical applications. The problem is: How are the three registers posited as making up subjectivitythe real (R), the symbolic (S), and the imaginary (I)held together? Indeed, the symbolic (the signifier) and the imaginary (meaning) seem to have hardly anything in commona fact demonstrated by the abundance and heterogeneity of languages. Moreover, the real, by definition, escapes the symbolic and the imaginary, since its resistance to them is precisely what makes it real.
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FIGURE 8
R I

(This is why Lacan identified the real with the impossible.) In psychoanalysis, the real resists, and thus is distinct from, the imaginary defenses that the ego uses specifically to misrecognize the impossible and its consequences. If each of the three registers R, S, and I that make up the Borromean knot is recognized to be toric in structure and the knot is constructed in three-dimensional space, it constitutes the perfect answer to the problem above, because it realizes a three-way joining of all three toruses, while none of them is actually linked to any other: If any one of them is cut, the other two are set free. Reciprocally, any knot that meets these conditions is called Borromean. Note that the subject is now defined by such a knot and not merely, as with the cross-cap, as the effect of a cut (figure 8).
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T O R O K , M A R I A (1925 1 998)

FIGURE 9
I S

ness. He also recommended manually working with the knots by cutting surfaces and tying knots. Finally, for Lacan, topology had not only heuristic value but also valuable implications for psychoanalytic practice. BERNARD VANDERMERSCH

See also: Knot; L and R schemas; Seminar, Lacans; Signifier/ signified; Structural theories; Symptom/sinthome; Thalassa. ATheory of Genitality; Unary trait.

Bibliography
the fourth ring (the sinthome)

Bourbaki, Nicolas. (1994). Elements of the history of mathematics (John Meldrum, Trans.). Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Darmon, Marc. (1990). Essais sur la topologie Lacanienne. Paris: Editions de lAssociation Freudienne Internationale.

Unfortunately, this ideal solution, which could be considered normal (without symptoms), seems to lead to paranoia. Lacan considered this to be the result of failure to distinguish among the three registers, as if they were continuous, which indeed occurs in clinical work. Being identical, R, S, and I are only differentiated by means of a complication, a fourth ring that Lacan called the sinthome. By making a ring with the three others, the sinthome (symptom) differentiates the three others by assuring their knotting (figure 9). In this arrangement, the sinthome has the function of determining one of the rings. If it is attached to the symbolic, it plays the role of the paternal metaphor and its corollary, a neurotic symptom. Lacan also drew upon non-Borromean knots, generated by slips, or mistakes, in tying the knots. These allowed him to represent the status of subjects who are unattached to the imaginary or the real and who compensate for this with supplements (Lacan, 2001). In such cases the sinthome is maintained. By using knots, Lacan was able to reveal his ongoing research without hiding its uncertainties. The value of the knots, which resist imaginary representation, is that they advance research that is not mere speculation and that they can graspat the cost of abandoning a grand synthesisa few bits of the real (Lacan, 19761977, session of March 16, 1976). Even though he knew something about topology as practiced by mathematicians, Lacan advised his students to use it stupidly (Lacan, 19741975, session of December 17, 1974) as a remedy for our imaginary simpleminded17 6 4

` Lacan, Jacques. (1975). La troisieme, intervention de J. Lacan, le 31 octobre 1974. Lettres de l Ecole Freudienne, 16, 178203. . (19741975). Le seminaire, livre XXII, R.S.I. Ornicar? 25. . (19761977). Le seminaire XXIII, 197576: Le sinthome. Ornicar? 611. . (2001). Joyce: Le symptome. In his Autres ecrits. Paris: Seuil. Pont, Jean-Claude. (1974). La topologie algebrique des origi` nes a Poincare. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

TOROK, MARIA (19251998)

A French psychoanalyst of Hungarian birth, Maria Torok was born on November 10, 1925, in Budapest and died in New York on March 25, 1998. She trained as a psychologist at the Sorbonne in the early 1950s; there she met Nicolas Abraham, a philosopher interested in the phenomenology of Husserl and a psychoanalyst, and she became his companion. She was initially a psychological counselor in nursery schools when she went into analysis with Bela Grunberger and later with Margaret Clark-Williams, an American-born psychoanalyst. Torok went on to become an analyst and a member of the Societe psychanalytique de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society). In Toroks work together with Abraham as well as in their individual work, both were concerned with
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