Abstract
The mechanism of the Pass is certainly one answer that Lacan will give to these questions—the creation of an institutional device that allows analysands to give testimony to this “beyond of analysis.” Lacan himself, in the debates on his practice of variable length sessions, comments on the role of the end of the session as “punctuation,” and Jacques-Alain Miller also consistently emphasize the analyst’s interpretation as providing punctuation to the raw discourse of the analysand. It is this act of punctuation that turns speech into the written. Lacan makes a reference, for example, to Plato and Aristotle, in particular to their use of the terms “active” and “passive” with regard to the discussion of form and matter. Lacan describes this as a fantasy. Lacan is presenting a very classic reading of his work. In the psychoanalytic experience, it is the body and affects that alert people to what Lacan calls the “meaning effects” of some letter.