The Pass (psychoanalysis)

The Pass is a procedure that was introduced by Jacques Lacan in 1967 as a means of gathering data on a psychoanalysis and investigating its results. It was adopted as an institutional procedure in the École freudienne de Paris and later in the World Association of Psychoanalysis.

In the 1960s, Lacan was increasingly occupied with two intersecting themes: the issue of how to define and assess the end of a psychoanalysis; and the question of the relationship between psychoanalysis and science.

In 1962, when still a member of the Société française de psychanalyse, Lacan called into question Freud’s comments at the end of "Analysis Terminable and Interminable", saying "it really isn’t castration anxiety that in and of itself constitutes the neurotic’s ultimate impasse". Lacan’s tenth seminar, the last prior to his departure from the International Psychoanalytical Association, examines this theme at length.

The following seminar in 1964, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, displaced the question "is psychoanalysis a science?", to ask, "what is a science that includes psychoanalysis?" The 1966 text “Science and Truth”, offers a response to this question, opening with the comment: “contrary to what has been trumped up about a supposed break on Freud’s part with the scientism of his time, […] it was this very scientism […] that led Freud, as his writings show, to pave the way that shall forever bear his name".

Lacan acknowledged that some means of communicating and confirming the results of psychoanalysis was called for, and that neither the analyst who directs the treatment, nor any third party observer, could produce epistemologically rigorous accounts.

Lacan’s 1963 break from the IPA and the founding of his School in 1964 created the conditions in which he was able to explore these issues by devising an interface between the clinical setting and the institutional frame. This interface was announced in 1967 in the "Proposition of 9 October on the Psychoanalyst of the School" which put on the table a procedure that has since been described as “an experiment that progresses by stages leading to a result; with the particularity that the experimenter takes himself as the object of experimentation".

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