This book collates writings from Petros Patounas in response to Jacques Lacan's Seminar of the Psychoanalytic Act. Some of the essays arise from presentations given in the seminar series, "Lacan and the Psychoanalytic Act: A Question of Subjective Presumption" during 2013/14 at the University of London Union, UK. Desire in Lacan is desire for absolute difference and yet its conveyance is an element Alien to the subject - that occurs by the letter and by the act; whose components do not represent themselves for one another as with the signifier. This is because the kinesis, let us say in abbreviated form, the flux, of the question, 'What is Psychoanalysis and What is its Ousia?' refers not to the 'Who or the What is a Psychoanalyst?' but to how the subject can deal with the megacosm of the Real, is neither a surprise nor an enigma - it is a mystery.

This book is a gospel on the subject of the ethics of the well-spoken, that is the speaking being of the ALPHAct. An ori-entation for the analyst to a kinesis of flowing with the flux of the letter, where the subject's mark within the signifier instead of being counted in repetition of the same, it maps the difference, a topology of life emanated by the vector of desire. "On the Ascesis of Psychoanalysts" is an ascesis of swimming in language, where the swimming subject finds their own way of breathing, as if breath is something that needs to be taught, and though it is not, the breath of desire is repressed, and then through breathing language becomes lunguage. Petros' unique writing leads the reader to an also unique reading experience. His text not only praises the desiring subject of the ALPHAct, the EPSILONrhogammaOMICRONnu, but with its vanishing grammar it becomes an inscription of it, it be-comes an ethical compass to the desire of the analyst. Angelos Tsialides Lacanian Psychoanalyst

Le titre ne fait pas reference a n'importe quel acte : Cet Acte est un Acte litteral. La caracterisation semble paradoxale car le sens litteral ne peut que concerner les figures de style dans le discours, comme la metaphore et la metonymie. Comment se fait-il qu'un acte puisse etre litteral ? Mais c'est paradoxal precisement parce que nous avons limite la parole a la dimension du mot articule par la voix. C'est a ce moment-la que Patounas innove, en faisant coupe au discours et en revelant la place de l'Acte: L'Acte est le moment ou la parole n'est adressee a personne d'autre qu'a ce qui est Etranger au sujet, son Souffle. C'est un mouvement (Kinesis) de pur desir, une ecriture, autrement dit, une parole litterale. L'Acte est l'incarnation de la parole dans un discours qui n'est pas du semblant. Patounas explique comment cette incarnation de la parole donne a l'etre humain, en tant que sujet de la parole, une nouvelle chair, un nouveau corps.

This book collates writings from Petros Patounas in response to Jacques Lacan's Seminar of the Psychoanalytic Act. Some of the essays arise from presentations given in the seminar series, "Lacan and the Psychoanalytic Act: A Question of Subjective Presumption" during 2013/14 at the University of London Union, UK. Desire in Lacan is desire for absolute difference and yet its conveyance is an element Alien to the subject - that occurs by the letter and by the act; whose components do not represent themselves for one another as with the signifier. This is because the kinesis, let us say in abbreviated form, the flux, of the question, 'What is Psychoanalysis and What is its Ousia?' refers not to the 'Who or the What is a Psychoanalyst?' but to how the subject can deal with the megacosm of the Real, is neither a surprise nor an enigma - it is a mystery.