Article written for a causAbock presentation on January 11, 2025.
We will quote the words and wit of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who, in his seminar of 1954-1955, makes use of the story written by Edgar Allan Poe: “The Purloined Letter”, not precisely to answer the same question, but using the words that will be quoted here as a response.
The Purloined Letter – By: Edgar Allan Poe, summary.
Paris, autumn of the 18th. While two detectives were enjoying a long silence and puffing on their pipes, they were interrupted by the arrival of the prefect of the Parisian police, Monsieur G. The surprise visit of this character, whom these two relaxed policemen had not seen in years, was intended to consult Dupin’s opinion on a matter that G referred to as something official and that was causing them great inconvenience. The matter, which he also referred to as something whose solution seemed too easy and obvious, could not be resolved and was the cause of his dissatisfaction.
G tells the two police officers, Dupin in particular, that a document, more precisely a letter of great importance, has been stolen from the royal quarters. He points out that the individual who has committed the theft is also a well-known person, to whom the possession of that document gave him a certain power “since the disclosure of its contents to a third person, who should not be named, would call into question the honour of a person of the most exalted position.”
The power that this thief, identified as Minister D, had over this person also lies in the latter knowing about both the theft and its executor, leaving her at the minister’s mercy. Although the story has a plot that does not directly reveal who is being talked about, it can be read in the context that the people in question in the scene narrated below involved the queen, the king, the minister and the letter itself.
It all happened while she, the queen, was surprised by the untimely entrance into the room of that person to whom the contents of the document could not be revealed, the king. She cleverly manages to subtly leave the letter open and visible on a table in an act of absolute normality so as not to arouse any suspicion. For his part, Minister D, an unscrupulous character who also arrives on the scene a few minutes later, sees the letter, recognizes the handwriting of the address and observes the confusion of the queen probing her secret. Immediately afterwards, in the middle of the conversation in which they were involved, Minister D manages to reproduce a letter and place it on the table next to the document in question, exchanging it and thus obtaining the letter and its message, leaving in its place a document of no importance whatsoever.
The situation has reached a point in which the possession of the document was already used to manipulate and obtain benefits for high political purposes. Making it clear that the possession of the document and not the placement of the letter conferred power to its possessor, who was finding the way for his benefit. For this reason, the woman, eager to recover the document, discreetly asked the prefect for help in its recovery.
However, G turned to Dupin, as he could not help the queen recover what was stolen from her, even though they used the most advanced techniques and rigorous police procedures. The prefect, reporting to Dupin what had been done so far, comments on how they had infiltrated the hotel where Minister D resides, where they correctly assume D had the letter. Knowing his way of acting and his nocturnal absences and taking advantage of the fact that the hotel employees were apparently good at sleeping and drinking, they had managed to infiltrate the facilities several times for a thorough search.
With the most advanced microscopes, they have inspected the furniture, chairs, tables, walls, laminates, paintings, the ceiling, every corner, and possible places where the smallest space could accommodate such a letter. Even the furniture and pillows have been pierced with the finest needles in search of chambers designed for this purpose. It is claimed that even the books in the library have been inspected. Dupin, who is well aware of the high technical capabilities and the rigorous method used by the Parisian police, has no other solution than to recommend a new inspection to the prefect G.
Amidst the laughter of grief, Monsieur G takes his leave, assuring them once again that the most advanced and intense search has been carried out, indicating that a new attempt would not yield a different result. Before leaving, the prefect, answering the question of the two policemen, proceeds to describe the letter, detailing its internal appearance and stopping a little longer to explain how it looks from the outside.
Months later, G returns to the same place where he found these two policemen on that occasion when he was in search of advice. The two detectives, who were once again busy puffing on their pipes, received him not without asking for updates on the matter of the letter. To which the prefect responded, without hiding his disappointment at the failure. Despite having heeded Dupin’s advice and having embarked again, together with the Parisian police, on a new and exhaustive search with the most rigorous methods, he did not manage to obtain any results.
G emphasizes that the failure in the search has increased the value of the reward offered by the woman desperate to find the letter. He also points out that the amount is so high that he could pay 50,000 Francs if someone would lead him to its whereabouts. To which Dupin, not without first making a couple of provocative comments, suggests that he sign a check for this amount, and the letter would then be delivered to him. In a profound silence, prefect G heeds Dupin’s suggestion, signs the check, and receives the letter the detective gave him in exchange. The act left both men, his companion and the prefect, speechless and open-mouthed. The latter staggers away from the place, unable to articulate a single syllable to say goodbye, barely managing to get moving to disappear with the satisfaction of possessing the document.
To calm his companion’s amazement, Dupin proceeds to share the details of the discovery with him. First, he points out that he never doubted the technical capabilities of the Parisian police, their exhaustive search methods, or the rigor of the techniques used. Nonetheless, there was something in this procedure that had not been taken into account, and that required a little more than simple devices and methods: the ability to understand the character in question, Minister D, to be able to glimpse who he was, to inquire through his knowledge and to know how he could not only anticipate the movements of the police, since he knew the methods, acting under his own considerations and getting away with it.
Dupin thus deduces that the letter must indeed be in Minister D’s hotel and, due to its importance, must be within his reach. Therefore, inventing a reason for visiting D to discuss a matter of interest to him, he sneaks into the character’s lair and visualizes where he has placed the document. Precisely in a visible place so as not to raise suspicions that it was the document in question. D, however, had made modifications to the letter. He had become the recipient of it, had changed the seal with which letters were sealed at that time, and even before placing it on one of the shelves visible in his study, he had crumpled it as if it were a document of no importance whatsoever. To which Dupin attributes an appearance so customary that its details had become excessive, identifying it as his target.
The next day, he returns to the minister’s house with the excuse of having left some of his belongings the day before. At that moment, an altercation occurs in the street with a man who fires a flash in front of a crowd. Later, the man would be taken for a madman or a drunk and released since he was also a person paid by Dupin himself. The event attracted the minister’s attention, distracting him and allowing Dupin to get the letter and pay back in the same coin. He replaces the document with another unimportant letter and leaves the place having fulfilled his objective. He had recovered the letter from that woman, thus deserving his reward.
April 27, 1955.
Jacques Lacan, in his seminar “The Ego in Freud’s Theory and Psychoanalytic Technique,” uses this story to allude to the responsibility that the psychoanalyst has, when faced with those who come to him wanting to know about their truth. That is, to help recover the letter and return it, without being interested in possessing it and, even less in its message.
Referring to Poe’s story, Lacan says that for all those through whom this document passed, “the letter is their unconscious. It is their unconscious with all its consequences” (p. 197). It is the unconscious in the sense in which he defines the letter as the “word that flies.” On another occasion, he attributed the word an effect in the conformation of the subject’s unconscious and the determination of his very state as a subject (Lacan, 1981). For he also understood through Freud, who, in his discovery of the unconscious, the relationship between the latter and the subject’s experience, lived through language. A clear example of this can be read in “The Interpretation of Dreams” of 1900. There, Freud places a clear emphasis on the separation of the image and the word, attributing to the latter and not to the images present in the dream, the content of that which generates a unique meaning for the patient and which Lacan would call the signifier.
The stolen letter in Poe’s story, says Lacan, “does not have the same meaning everywhere, it is a truth, not to be divulged. As soon as it is put into the minister’s pocket, it is no longer what it was before, no matter what it had been” (198). Being able to read between the lines, the message in the letter could only have a meaning for those in that room before the minister’s arrival and his theft. For the king, to whom it should not be revealed and for the queen who shrewdly hid its content by leaving the document in the “real”.
In other words, it means that what is hidden in this story is not the letter itself because, as Lacan says: “in the real, the idea of a hidden place is insane” (202). What is hidden is the truth. It is unthinkable that there are hidden places, says Lacan, because if someone designates a place for this, one can also access it. While the truth is something else, in the story, it corresponds to the message in the letter and whose meaning belongs only to the one to whom it is addressed. For this reason, by collecting his reward and returning the letter to where it belongs, Dupin avoids falling into that power that seized Minister D with his possession of the said document.
The psychoanalyst.
It is worth remembering how Dupin deciphered the minister’s way of thinking in the story. I bring up Miller to clarify this point with the quote from his text “The Age of the Man Without Qualities”, where he says the following: “The art of analysis lies in that, in the context of the analytical session, each word carries multiple meanings, that the analyst has as a discipline to know that he does not know what the patient says, that he has to learn his language, the unique use that the patient makes of it” (p. 12).
That is to say, the psychoanalyst understands that each subject is a unique case. The singularity that each subject brings to the analytical interview is neither measurable, fathomable, nor discoverable with any technological device or pre-established rigorous methodology. A learning and teaching process is established in which the analyst, by learning the subject’s language, can slowly teach him to listen to himself to access and understand his singularity. It is not enough to have a visual description of his letter; it is necessary to know what it is. Furthermore, one must abandon the idea of its visual characteristics since the image has nothing to do with the unconscious and the truth of the subject, which can only be reached through his word.
Since, the word, as the shaper of the unconscious and of the subjectivity of the analysand, “is the material of the soul” – as José María Álvarez says when mentioning what Freud understood about the patient’s language. For this reason, the analytical practice within Freudian construction is based on respect for the subject’s singularity. Extending a hand that could lead him to the recovery of his letter and his message and, by not trying to keep it, would thus lead the subject to know about his truth.
Bibliography.
Freud, S. (2001). Sigmund Freud Obras Completas IV. La Interpretación de los Sueños (primera parte) (1900). Amorrortu Editores.
Lacan, J. (1981). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan / Book XI. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Norton.
Lacan, J. (1991). The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954-1955). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan / Book II. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Norton.
Miller, J.-A. (2006). La era del hombre sin atributos. Virtualia, Revista Digital de La EOL.
