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.
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".
[3] 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.
[7] The "Proposition" stipulates that following the experience, "its results must be communicated: to the School initially for criticism, and correlatively placed within reach of those societies which, as excluded as we have been by them, remain our concern nonetheless."
This point was developed in 1969: "The one who provides [a teaching] has to come out of it rightly poised for other presentations to find their line of recourse in his one, in other words, he has to harbour a promise to contribute to the work of the A[nalysts of the] S[chool] in a useful way".
The Procedure of the Pass has functioned with much greater transparency in the WAP than in the EFP: the testimonies by the passands to the passers are followed by public testimonies from the nominated Analysts of the School; the reports of the cartels of the Pass are published; and the inevitable questions raised by this delicate procedure are treated openly and in ad hoc institutional conferences.