A second contradiction appears in Lupasco’s work in the planes between reality and the self, linked to the fact that homeostasis exists neither internally nor externally which allows for the consciousness’ constant creation, of what he calls psychological energy which is in fact a third matter, after physical and biological matter.

This invention stays put whenever a contradiction morphed into an included third blocks against a movement of reality.

Then when we suppose a psychological evolution to be logic, unavoidable we actually stop the development of thought, which might be a momentary solution to the therapist’s work on anxiety but leave place for the invention necessary to the encounter of this aporia. The patient’s hope to evolve towards less anxiety and problems and the therapist’s disarray of not knowing how to help them can create a totem, for example schizophrenia, which conflict with the reality of evolution will often create subjective inventions if we suddenly completely cease to believe in this totem!

The main function of labels in psychiatry and psychoanalysis is to block the movement of thought when the diagnosis is opposed to the slow work on the symptom. This is where Lupasco’s second level of contradiction brings us something: if a concluded logic collides with another opposite, antagonistic logic then the equal block creates an immediate consciousness of which the fluctuations confronted to reality lead to a consciousness of consciousness, pure productive psychological energy, itself creator of logic. The psyche then constituted allows to continue to think beyond objects, successes or failures, healing or symptoms. Which show the actual unpredictability of psychiatric disorders.

This here is the effect of the pure pleasure of thinking. Lupasco’s theory is a proposition to logically understand in a non-mystic way the transcendental necessity. This energetic heterology (the term is not from Lupasco…), which is not the concept of heterogeneity, is what allows for the symbolic invention which in finé is only the witness of a singular and evidently contradictory situation of a body evolving in the real world, here a common ground between Lupasco and Spinoza.

It is the oxymoron’s fixation (if we stay on the first level, before the included third) with the risk of a contra-phobia totem that pushes a violent truth against the world itself and its complexity that is the belief in its fanatical acceptation.

It is that the belief (in God, paranoia, schizophrenia, etc) is not a productive, symbolic force.

Then if the invention, product of the psychological energy, is lacking, the only way that we have to advance in this world of contradiction disappears and is quickly replaced by anxiety.

It is not immediately possible for this anxiety to lead to creation, necessarily like for any invention and sufficiently explains the importance of silence, only place where this contradictory dynamic can take place. Silence and reflection time are one and the same for this psychological energy to happen…

The whole theory of steps can be reread under Lupasco’s light. The vital necessity of the fetal step blocks against the new necessity of the “invention” of breathing and of the scream, the separation creating a contradiction that will be overthrown by this invention. This scream is the origin of language, creating a new logical plane that will be the link between internal and external but not only because a symbol order is created little by little, with its own complexities and fertile contradictions etc.

Being alone against the other in the necessity and in the illusion of a common language is a funny proposition, preaching human destiny against science and science against human destiny which is the beginning of the imaginative thinking process, in a salving antagonistic game.

Lupasco brings us the idea that this conflict is vital in both way for the included third of this contradiction to create when it encounters reality, invention at the borders of consciousness, in its constant imbalance.

The subject theory can not therefore be a science but a practice close to the thought’s obstetric, to the scientific invention’s obstetric too as long as it is opposed more or less dramatically to traditions: to each their science and for those who know what they mean! This is how it evolves.

As also each person’s subjectivity is partially a mistake compared to the other’s subjectivity, we can see that this dramatically reduces the common speech and the pretended scientific knowledge of the human being.

Lupasco’s theory also shows its danger! We say no science without conscience but precisely because one and the other are not identical and, in Lupasco’s theory, are precisely antinomic if we associate science with a non-contradictory monologue attempt.

In fact, be it with Lupasco, Freud or Lacan, the scientific pretension of human practices blocks against the aporia between science and subjectivity. A general theory can never be compatible with the simple consciousness of the self. Then, there is nothing to say about the subject except that it exists indeed a logic or even a science of the symptom: it is indeed because it is logical and a monologue that it is symptom and in this way can be interpreted easier by the therapist of the patient.

The difficulty of analysis is that it is based on the human being of which the theory corpus is based on the creation of other theories, based on each other’s subjectivity. We understand for the silence’s theory to be its foundation, which has nothing to do with Lacan’s dry theory of non-being, the being being in fact the closest to this silence.

Psychoanalysis would then be an ephemeral theory of which the spine is mostly on the side of a desire’s ethic rather than a scientific object’s. It would reduce all sciences to a simple metaphor of each other’s creative abilities.

The silence becomes the main condition to this consciousness of consciousness of Stéphane Lupasco, link to the work of what he calls the third matter, the psychological energy, coming after the first one linked to the excluded third, the physical energy and the second one linked to the included third, the biological energy. The psychological matter only appears when there is an imbalance in the contradictions that form its foundations. The silence is where it spreads.

The consciousness of an object is shown in the imbalance where the strongest point becomes object and the weakest subject. This point that Lupasco barely touched is of a considerable clinical importance. Indeed, this is how the nearly quantum effects of certain sessions is explained, where the importance of the antagonistic logic is brutally inverted. Then the neurosis’ object can disappear, replaced by another subjectivity.

In balance, nothing else appears than a fixated included third, a strong belief in a totem or symptom. Silence is then necessary, silence of this belief for consciousness to become conscious of itself as pure desire, pure psychological energy, without object. To not speak of the painful balance of symptom shakes it, imbalances it, opening a continuation for the subject.

This is where Lupasco stops his work, leaving us with a fertile universe in which there are multiple levels of contradictions and logic, where one does not stop at the contradiction but sees it as promise of creation, of research of other balances and of unknown planes. Of course, we saw that the Freudian unconscious finds its place into Lupasco’s first theory, this is the included third. The symptom is a contradiction of logical levels that finds its way in invention, sometimes in the patient’s interpretation itself.

But beyond the progression of the scientific and human progress linked to the dynamic of included third, of crossing the principle of non contradiction, this logic of silence exists where everything that goes through our senses is put aside to enter what Lupasco calls a zone of nonresistance, of pure affect, that resembles closely this blurry state of the therapist’s attention seen by Freud. This silence of the object, of theories is the cradle from which this mysterious energy comes from, energy that he calls psychological. It allows desire in the contradictory jungle of its objects.

It is truly during the silence of sleep where the external world disappear that, in the chaos of dreams, the aporia of living are regulated. The mathematician that wants to sleep to think about a hard question uses Lupasco’s idea of another level of reality, purely psychological, pure affect that allows to wake up changed, different without knowing how.

It is in the unconsciousness of change that we can see its depth because there is actually no logic to the fact that it changed us itself as logical confrontations make this happen. This can only work in Lupasco’s logic through the silence and ideally the zone of total nonresistance.

To sum it up, the fast field of the more punctual resonance is widely open to predictable and unpredictable contradictions, structured (like the lacanian signifiers) or destructured like the endless work of time and sound. Silence allows to sometimes listen which creates a concordance between the self and the other, the self and the world at the condition that the discord is not a scandal  or violence but simply a salving human situation caught between sound, signifier and silence to elaborate its poor and precious theories…

To conclude, some clinical cases to show what Lupasco’s work can bring to the practice.

During psychotherapy, she sees that as long as she keeps on making concessions following other’s advice on her desire, it gets canceled: indeed, she does not have her canceling abilities anymore in front of the possible actualization but the other’s that does not correspond to her personal levels of logic, being different from her. If she still authentically desire something consciously she also creates a resistance to this project that will allow her to be conscious of the object. The immediate consciousness is the effect of a logic that gets canceled by its perfect antagonist. The desire is then a consciousness of consciousness created by the movement of the internal and external world on this antagonistic balance, now the source of a new psychological energy that identifies the free and fragile choice of conscious thinking.

By following the choices of others, through logical necessity if we follow Lupasco, our desire reduces itself to anxiety since those logic do not antagonize our internal complexions. No contradictory balance can be reached and anxiety replaces the psychological energy, now out of reach.

When the relationship with the other is a fight, no consciousness of the self is required since the antagonistic force is external: the object is outside, the subject is completely within themselves. This is an ideal situation for the unconscious but it blocks the side of the desire. Being completely conscious of oneself is an endless battle, prisoner of Narcissus’ trap. There are a lot of example of this, Don Quixote being the most emblematic.

This cancellation of consciousness that is the consciousness of consciousness, this state of pure affect that is the balance of the opposites within the self, far from being knowledge is just the acceptation of the endless complexity of the universe and the human being in an endless succession of the swings of the balance of life. There is then less need to fight, the action being linked to this world’s movements, sensitivity replacing passion. No thought without objects opposing other objects. This story of Jean Yanne who told that after a memorable evening and night with a new lover could tell her that it had been really good, nearly as good as when he is alone!

The smile induced by this hopefully imagined crudeness is precisely linked to Lupasco’s included third concept: those contradictory happiness make us think over both terms and their contradictions.

Maybe this patient had listened to the comedian, experiencing love in the same way and ending it quickly with a breakup once displeasure wins over. She indeed sees that her partner never enters her world and that he only offers half of the exchange: for her to enter his. This logic is not bearable for not being regulated by its antagonist: she immediately rejects the lover, managing her own contradictions with the comfort of her logical antagonisms, contained and balanced in herself. Her thought process finds itself limited from only having to manage her own contradictions, safe from external confrontations. This imaginary seclusion creates a symptom in her and brings her to therapy. Once she could accept another person’s contradictions, her thought process development took over the symptom thanks to this other level imposed by the therapist’s silence.

The two examples are inverted: in the first case, the balance is in the other, the adviser keeping the internal tension to create thoughts. In the second, it is on the contrary the way of the internal balance that excludes the external confrontation and risks stopping the development of a contradictory thought thanks to external influence.

This is how we understand Jean Yanne through the lens of Lupasco, teaching us that the only real strength of the psychological energy is the silence, eventually productive on the contradictions and confrontations offered by life. If I close this text on a silence on love as the comedian tells us, it is because it is the most inaudible: thankfully if it opens worlds, it never closes any!