Jacques Lacan, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Meaning is retroactive. A session ends where the punctuation falls, not where the hour does, and a fixed fifty minutes teaches the analysand to distribute their speech around a clock.1234
Is this time—the time characteristic of the fall of heavy bodies—in some way sacred in the sense that it corresponds to the time of the stars asit was fixed for all eternity by God—who, as Lichtenberg tells us, winds our sundials? Perhaps we could acquire a somewhat better idea of time by comparing the amount of time required for the creation of a symbolic object with the moment of inattention in which we drop it.The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, pp. 257–258
Even if it communicates nothing, discourse represents the existence of communication; even if it denies the obvious, it affirms that speech constitutes truth; even if it is destined to deceive, it relies on faith in testimony.Écrits, A Selection, Fink Translation, pp. 44–45
And here he is apprehended as the judge of the value of this discourse. This has two consequences. The ending of a session cannot but be experienced by the subject as a punctuation of his progress.Écrits, A Selection, Fink Translation, pp. 96–97
Are we to say that this time, the time of the fall of heavy bodies, is in some way sacred in the sense that it corresponds to the time of the stars as they were fixed in eternity by God who, as Lichtenberg put it, winds up our sundials? Perhaps we might get a somewhat better idea of time by comparing the time required for the creation of a symbolic object with the moment of inattention when we let it fall.Écrits, A Selection, Sheridan Translation, p. 73
The proximate cause of the 1963 break; still the most concrete practical difference between his school and the rest of the profession.