52 The Lacanian Review No. 10 The Clinic of Paranoia First, Lacan verifies his being as fumier. To do otherwise could have been catastrophic for him (for instance, if he had been told “You are not a fumier, for proof of it we have your “good behaviour”). But Lacan does so in a precise way: “If you think so yourself [that you are a fumier], you must admit that it helps you to believe that other people think so too.” Lacan doesn’t verify the Other, but the patient. Second, Lacan extracts himself from the position of an omniscient Other: “You see that I don’t know, since I am asking you.” To verify what he says doesn’t mean to reinforce his hallucinations and delusions: Lacan never goes in this direction during the conversation, on the contrary he even sometimes confronts his beliefs: “I’m not at all sure we hear [your thoughts],” “Now, that’s a bit much!” Third, the patient tends to repeat what Lacan says in an echo-like manner. Lacan doesn’t allow that: “No, listen, it is you who just said it.” You said so. In short, it seems to me that Lacan’s operation consists in extracting signifiers from the foreign body of the Other in order to allow the patient to subjectivize them. When he says, concerning his thoughts, “it’s mecha- nical for me,” he points precisely at what Lacan says about “imposed words.” The patient is spoken by the Other, is a spoken being. But when the patient does a “little slip,” as Lacan put it, we have a glimpse of subjec- tivity. What should be the position of the analyst to support this operation? Let us take what Lacan said at the end of the case presentation for our compass: “There, it is rather in you that I took an interest.” A PRIMARY RELATION TO THE OTHER