Robert Samuels - Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis - Lacan's Reconstruction of Freud-Routledge (1993)

Between
Philosophy
&
Psychoanalysis
This page intentionally left blank
Between
Philosophy
&
Psychoanalysis
Lacan's
Reconstruction
of Freud
R o b e r t S a m u e l s
ROUTLEDGE New York and London

Published in 1 993 by
Routledge
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Copyright © 1993 by Routledge, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America on acid free paper.
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trieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Samuels, Robert, 1961 —

Between philosophy and psychoanalysis : Lacan’s reconstruction of
Freud / by Robert Samuels,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 -4 1 5 -9 0 6 7 5 -X . — ISBN 0 -4 1 5 -9 0 6 7 6 -8 (pbk.)
1. Psychoanalysis and philosophy. 2. Freud, Sigmund, 1 8 5 6 -1 9 3 9 .
3. Lacan, Jacques, 1901— . I. Title.
B F 175.4.P 45S26 1993
150.19 '5 2 — dc20 92-4 2 8 0 6
CIP
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data also available.

Dedicated to the memory o f
Ira Samuels
and
Robert Slobodien
Contents
Introduction: From Freud’s Project to L a c a n ’s Logic 1
The Existence o f the Real

1 T he D ream an d the Psychotic Subject 27
2 Sexuality an d the U ncon scious 44
The Phenomenology o f the Imaginary

3 C o n scio u sn ess and N arcissism 59
4 T he L ogic o f Totem and T aboo 75
The Structure o f the Symbolic

5 Beyond the Pleasure Principle 107
The Logic o f the Object (a)

6 T he O b ject o f the End o f the A nalysis 135
N o tes 149
B ibliograp h y 157
Index 161
vii
Acknowledgments
This book has been developed out of my doctoral thesis from the
University of Paris VIII. I would like to first of all thank the Department
of Psychoanalysis and the Ecole de la Cause freudienne in Paris. This
work was in part inspired by the seminars of Jacques-Alain Miller and
other members of the Freudian Field. 1 would also like to thank my
family and friends for their support and encouragement.
Robert Samuels
New York , 1992
Introduction: From Freud’s Project To
Lacan’s Logic
The initial task of this book is to articulate the inner logic of Freud’s
thought as it relates to psychoanalytic practice and theory. I believe
that this inner logic is often ignored, making the field of psychoanalysis
seem like a jumble of unrelated concepts. In order to help structure
this field, I will turn to the work of the French psychoanalyst, Jacques
Lacan, who argues that his conception of the three fields of the Real,
the Imaginary, and the Symbolic serves to bring together the entirety
of Freud’s theory and practice.
One of Lacan’s central, underlying arguments is the division of the
psychoanalytic movement into three periods. The first is the initial
discovery of psychoanalysis by Freud, the second is that Lacan de
scribes as the forgetting (or repression) of Freud by the school of “ego
psychology,” and the third is Lacan’s own “return to Freud.” This
return is an attempt to read Freud in a structured and logical way that
makes manifest certain latent patterns of Freud’s thought.
In order to flesh out some of Freud’s main ideas, Lacan turns to the
field of philosophy. The effect of this is to introduce a number of
philosophers to the field of psychoanalysis, and a number of psychoan
alysts to the field of philosophy. It can be argued that psychoanalysis
can be seen, in many ways, as a response to some of the questions and
paradoxes that modern philosophy has generated. In particular, the
focus will be on how three dimensions of the Real, the Imaginary, and
the Symbolic relate to three fundamental areas of human experience
which, in philosophy, are conceived as the existential, the phenomeno
logical, and the structural.
Existentialism, Phenomenology, and Structuralism in Analysis
Existentialism refers to the sensual existence of the isolated subject

who is born into the world without any relation to any Other, without
1
2 / Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
language, and without the ability to communicate. On this level of

existential experience, it can be said that the subject is dominated by
the un-Symbolized world of Real1 sensations and perceptions.
In his initial attempts to define the Real, Lacan appropriates Sartre’s
idea that nothing is lacking in the Real— that the Real is exactly what
it is and nothing more. Lacan argues that it is only in the Symbolic
order of language that things can be lacking or be missing. Therefore,
the subject, who exists solely in the Real, is completely separated from
the Symbolic order of social relations.
This primary state of Real, pure existence can be replaced by the
secondary level of phenomenological consciousness where the pure
experience of sensation becomes superseded by the unity of the ego
and the intentionality of the individual.2 Lacan calls this formation of
unity Imaginary, because it is founded on the essential illusion of a
totalized body-image. Lacan argues that the subject gains a concept of
it only through an ideal representation of a reflected narcissistic image.
This image itself represents the organization of the ego’s perceptual
field into a unified and limited field of consciousness.
The third dimension of experience is the structural level of language
and social relations/ On this level, the subject is no longer a Being-in-
itself (Real), nor a Being-for-itself (Imaginary), but rather a Being-for-
Others (Symbolic), who must sacrifice its sensual needs and its egotistical
demands for the laws and values of its socio-historical environment.
In his early thesis, Paranoid Psychosis in its Relation to Personality,
Lacan attempts to bring together these three different dimensions of
human experience by creating a science of personality. “In order for
any human manifestation to be related to personality it must imply: 1.
a biographical development which we define objectively through a
typical evolution and through the relations of comprehension that
interpret themselves. This translates itself for the subject by the modes
of affectivity in which he lives his history (Erlebnis); 2. a conception
of himself, that we define objectively by his vital attitudes and the
dialectical progress that one can determine. This is translated by the
more or less ‘ideal’ images of himself that he brings to consciousness;
3. a certain tension of social relations, that we define objectively by the
pragmatic autonomy of his conduct and the bonds of ethical participa
tion which are recognized. It translates itself for the subject by the
representative value of which he feels himself affected vis-a-vis the
O ther.” (Lacan 1932, 42-3, translation mine) I would like to argue
that Lacan’s thesis shows that in 1932, he was already struggling with
the interrelation among the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.
Introduction / 3
On the primary level of the Real, the biographical development of

the subject is determined by the existential categories of affectivity and
experience (Erlebnis). Next, on the Imaginary level of the phenomenol
ogy of consciousness, the experiences ofthe subject are transformed into
ideal images of itself, while on the Symbolic level of social relations, the
main emphasis is placed on the relation between the subject and others.
The Ternary Structure of Freud’s Thought
These three dimensions of sensual experience (existential), individual

consciousness (phenomenological), and social relations (structural) are
essential to Freud’s thought. For example, the separation of the id, the
ego, and the super-ego is structured by the difference between pure,
instinctual sensation (the id), individual consciousness (the ego), and
social law (the super-ego). This text will attempt to show that Freud’s
theory of consciousness is phenomenological because it stresses the
intentionality of the knowing ego, while his conception of language
and social relations is structural because it is based on a theory of
differential, transcendental relations.
One of the differences between the realm of the ego and that of lan
guage is that with the ego a particular being directs its attention towards
a particular object without any outside interference, in the realm of lan
guage, one must always account for the mediation of another. Therefore,
when the phenomenologists stress the intentionality of consciousness,
they highlight the movement of attention from the knowing ego to the
known object. However, with the introduction of language and social
relations into consciousness, this movement of attention is transformed.
Everything becomes mediated by a third element or party that goes be
yond the consciousness of the ego. On the level of social reality, it is no
longer a question of the simple relationship between the knowing ego
and the known object, for now the mediating power of language and
social knowledge must be taken into account.
The philosopher Karl Otto Appel argues that there have been three
main stages in the history of Western philosophy, the ontological, the
epistemological, and the linguistical. For Appel, the ontological period
of philosophy stretches from Plato to Descartes, and it is most inter
ested with the understanding of objects themselves and is not concerned
with the knowing subject. The next period of philosophy is the episte-
mological which stretches from Descartes to Kant. During this time,
the central concern of philosophy moved away from the existence of
objects, to the knowing subject or ego. Questions of consciousness and

the intentionality of the ego dominate the discourse of philosophy. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, the focus of philosophy
switched and became more concerned with the question of language
and otherness. In this third, linguistical period of philosophy, knowl
edge itself becomes an object the must be accounted for. It is during this
period that the discipline of linguistic analysis arises, where language is
itself taken as an object of study.
This briefly describes the philosophical movement from the ontologi
cal concern with the object, to the epistemological exploration of the
knowing subject, to the present interest in language. These stages of
thought are, of course, generalizations that ignore the particularities of
each thinker, but do give a theoretical structure, or tool, that can be used
to organize the history of philosophy. It is striking how easily these same
categories can be applied to Freud’s thought. It is as if Freud was trying
to work out the age-old questions ofphilosophy by creating a new science
which turned philosophical theory into a therapeutic practice.
The interactions among objects, subjects, and language are ones
which are not only essential to the fields of psychoanalysis and philoso
phy, but also are essential to all individuals in their daily experiences.
Psychoanalysis takes these philosophical relationships and attempts to
work them out in analytic theory and practice.
An early example of this is found in one of Freud’s first theoretical
works, “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” where he divides the
mind into the three central systems of perception, consciousness, and
memory. In this ternary division, Freud attempts to relate the categories
of sensation (perception), consciousness, and language (memory). It
can be argued that Freud continually divides the psyche into three
systems, or agencies, in order to account for the interrelation of Real
sensations, Imaginary consciousness, and the Symbolic system of mem
ory and language. By linking Lacan’s categories to Freud’s concepts,
the history of philosophy, or at least Karl Otto Appel’s interpretation
of it, is repeated, or reproduced, in Freud’s structure of the human
mind. This argument coincides with Freud’s idea that the individual
always recapitulates the history of the race.
I can also reverse the way that I’ve been looking at this question and
say that the history of philosophy is determined by the development and
structure of the human being, who enters the world as an object amongst
other objects, who then becomes a knowing subject, who is later domi
nated by language and social relations. The existential-ontological level
of philosophy is in this way most concerned with the existence of what
Introduction / 5
I would like to call Real natural objects and experiences. Existence is

Real because it is not mediated by anything else.
In developmental terms, what first serves to mediate, or transform, the
Real is the Imaginary phenomenology and epistemology of conscious
ness. For Lacan, the Imaginary is dominated by the psychological rela
tionship between an ego and its object. Likewise, in the epistemological
period of philosophy, it is the point-of-view of the knowing ego that
determines the meaning and essence of the object. If Descartes can state
“ I think, therefore, I am,” it is because, for him, the thinking ego takes
precedence over pure existence or being. This reverses the existential
claim that existence precedes essence, and the Heideggerian notion that
the essential question of philosophy is the question of Being.
The phenomenological level of philosophy is, in this sense, fixated
on the second level of psychological development with its concentration
on the thinking and knowing ego, while the existential-ontological
schools are dominated by the primary level of natural and sensual
existence. The current period of philosophy is focused then on the
linguistical and social level of development.
Of course, the human being does not simply move from one stage
of development to the next. There is always an interaction between
these different levels of experience and periods of philosophy, but what
I would like to highlight is the way that different schools of thought
grow out of different developmental problems and resolutions.
With Freud, a certain developmental structure to his thought can be
located that repeats the philosophical movement from natural existence
(ontology), to the phenomenology of the knowing ego (epistemology),
to the structure of social mediation (linguistics). In Beyond the Pleasure
Principle, Freud presents a self-reading of the development of his own
thought. While introducing his concept of the death drive, Freud states:
“ I do not dispute the fact that the third step in the theory of instincts
[the death drive], which I have taken here, cannot lay claim to the same
degree of certainty as the two earlier ones— the extension of the concept
of sexuality and the hypothesis of narcissism.” (Freud 1920, 53) It can
be argued that this passage represents Freud’s attempt to read into his
own work a certain order of discovery that is determined by the ternary
division of the Real (sexuality), the Imaginary (narcissism) and the
Symbolic (the death drive).4
In his first discovery, Freud expands the common conception of
sexuality to include infantile and unconscious manifestations of the
libido. This primary discovery can be ascribed to his text of 1905,
Three Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality. The second discovery, the
concept of narcissism, can be connected to the text of 1914 entitled

“On Narcissism: An Introduction,” while the third discovery, the
theory of the death drive, is found in Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920). These three discoveries not only define three separate decades
of work, but they are determined by the distinction between an existen
tial theory of sexuality and sensation (Real), a phenomenological the
ory of consciousness and narcissism (Imaginary), and a structural con
ception of language and the death drive (Symbolic).
The first section of this book presents the first period of Freud’s work
(1 9 0 0 -1 9 0 9 ) in the twentieth century which is dominated by the discov
ery of a non-phallic and non-social form of sexuality. The concept of
infantile sexuality itself is based on the existential argument that the
subject first experiences the world in an autistic manner, without lan
guage, thought, or any form ofsocial regulation. In fact, Freud’s concept
of primary auto-erotism demands to be thought of on the level of the
‘primitive Real,’ where the subject has not yet determined the difference
between self and Other, or between male and female.
Furthermore, in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud
equates this primary stage of infantile sexuality with the unconscious
itself. “The fact is thus confirmed that what is unconscious in mental
life is also what is infantile.” (Freud 1916, 210) This connection,
between the unconscious and infantile sexuality will be developed by
linking together The Interpretation o f Dreams (1900) with Three Es
says on the Theory o f Sexuality (1905).
The second period of Freud’s work (1910—1919) where the concept
of narcissism is introduced in relation to the formation of the ego and
the phenomenology of consciousness will be discussed in the second
section of this book. “Narcissism: An Introduction (1914)” and an
other text from the same period, Totem and T aboo (1913), will be
analyzed in order to map out Freud’s theory of the Imaginary order.
The analysis will attempt to show how this secondary order of con
sciousness is in opposition to the primary level of pure sexual existence.
The third section will elaborate on the notion of the death drive as
it relates to the Symbolic order and to the third period of Freud’s
work (1 9 2 0 -1 9 2 9 ). Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and Group
Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego (1921) will be examined in
order to articulate a structural theory of language and social relations.
From the Project of Freud to the Logic of Lacan
The reading of Freud’s work presented here will not be simply

chronological, but it will also be logical. Lacan’s notion of logical time,
Introduction I 7
which serves to determ ine the relation betw een 1) the Real ord er o f
sexu ality and perception , 2) the Im aginary ord er o f con sciou sn ess and
n arcissism , and 3) the Sym bolic ord er o f lan gu age and the death drive
will be developed.
T h ese three dim ensions o f Being can be m ap ped on to L a c a n ’s schem a
L :5
s a'
a A
On this d iag ram , L acan attem pts to develop a logic o r algebra o f

relation s. In the p osition o f the S, he places w hat will be called the
existential Su bject o f infantile sex u ality ; on the line a -------- a ' he
lo cates the n arcissistic relation between an ob ject (a) and its Im aginary
representation (a'), and in the p osition o f the O ther (A), the social and
Sym bolic relation s o f lan gu age and law are found.
L acan often replaced concepts with sym bols in ord er to unite a series
o f id eas under the heading o f one m arker. In fact, he argued that the
only w ay th at a science m akes any ad van ces is by in trod u cin g new
sign s, like the sym bol for infinity o r the sq u are root. T h ese sy m bols act
as to o ls th at allow ceradn functions to be perform ed w ith out having
to exp lain how they w ork each time. They also allow different scientists
to com m u n icate with each other by creating a short-hand langu age.
A t first, these sym bols m ight seem alien ating, bu t they d o allow a
defined, but op en , logical structure to be established. L a c a n ’s schem a
L will be constantly referred to because it enables L acan to bring
together the entirety o f F reud ’s w ork. An ex am p le o f this is the w ay
that L acan returns to Freu d ’s second top ic o f the id, the ego, and the
su p erego. L acan eq u ates the id with the “ S ” o r subject. H e p lays on
the fact th at both the G erm an w ord for the id, which is “ E s ,” and the
first letter o f the w ord for subject ‘S ’ are pronounced the sam e. Lacan
calls the id the ‘su bject in his stupid and ineffable existen ce’ in order
to stress the w ay th at the natural existence o f the sen su o u s id precedes
the structure o f lan gu age and know ledge.
On a second level, L acan locates the relation between the ego and
its ideal im age, o r other (autre in French), on the line betw een (a) an d
(a'). L acan uses these m athem atical sym bols to show that the relation
betw een the ego and its im age is defined by the optical relation betw een
a Real p oin t and an Im aginary point. In other w ord s, for every Real
representation of an ego there is a corresponding imaginary represen

tation.
in opposition to the imaginary other (a') or alter ego, Lacan places the
Symbolic Other (A) or superego.6 in French and German philosophy, the
term Other has been used to connote various things, such as the other
person, the other sex, the social order, or even God. All of these terms
represent different elements that serve to show the way that an individu
al's consciousness is mediated, overcome, or challenged by an external
force that is then internalized. For Freud, it is the function of the super
ego to internalize these external representations and functions.
On Lacan’s schema, Freud’s different agencies also take on a tempo
ral logic. The Subject (S) or id, is born into the world without relation
to the Other (A) in a state of initial autism and auto-erotism. This
initial logical period is termed the state of the primitive Real, it is in
this initial period of the Real that Freud and Lacan locate the existential
subject; both argue that the unity of the ego does not exist at first, but
has to be developed. Therefore, on Lacan’s schema L, the existential
Subject (S) is placed before the narcissistic relation between the ego (a)
and the other (a'). It is only in a second logical time that the subject
gains access to the stable world of objects and reflexive dual relations.
It is, in fact, through relations to other objects and people that a sense
of self begins to develop. These Imaginary dual relations are narcissistic
and limited because they are based on the need to exclude the third
order of social law and regulation.
An interesting anticipation of Lacan’s logical categories of the Real,
the Imaginary, and the Symbolic can be found in the work of the
American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce’s categories of
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, can help to explain the logical
temporality that been developing in relation to Lacan’s schema L.
Before these terms can be defined, it must be shown where they can
be placed on Lacan’s diagram. I will relate Firstness to the position of
the Real Subject (S), Secondness to the Imaginary dual relation between
the ego (a) and its image (a') and Thirdness to the intervention of the
Symbolic Other (A).
The Philosophy of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic
Peirce argues that there is a primary level of existence that consists

solely of pure sensations and feelings. “Firstness is the mode of being
which consists in its subject’s being positively such as it is regardless
Introduction / 9
of aught else. . . . The idea of First is predominant in the ideas of

freshness, life, freedom. The free is that which has not another behind
it, determining its actions. . . . By feeling, I mean an instance of that
kind of consciousness which involves no analysis, comparison or any
process whatsoever, nor consists in whole or in part of any act by which
one stretch of consciousness is distinguished from another, which has
its own positive quality which consists in nothing else, and which is of
itself all that it is.” (Peirce, 7 6 -8 1 ) For Peirce, like Lacan, the primary
state of the Real is defined by its full positivity and its lack of relation
or determination. It is equivalent to Sartre’s Being-in-itself, which is
without any form of lack or negation.
Opposed to this primary form of pure existence, Peirce posits his
category of Secondness. “The idea of second is predominant in the
ideas of causation and statical force. For cause and effect are two; and
statical forces always occur between pairs. Constraint is a Secondness.
. . . In sense and will, there are reactions of Secondness between the
ego and non-ego (which non-ego may be an object of direct conscious
ness). . . . Now there can be no resistance where there is nothing of the
nature of struggle or forceful action. By struggle I must explain that I
mean mutual action between two things regardless of any sort of third
or medium, and in particular regardless of any law of action.” (Peirce
79—89) In both Lacan’s and Peirce’s logic, the dual relation between
an ego (a) and its object (a') is dependant on the exclusion of the third
term (A) of law and order.
The place of the Other (A) thus can be connected to the idea of
Thirdness. “The third category of elements of phenomena consists of
what we call laws when we contemplate them from the outside only,
but which when we see both sides of the shield we call thoughts.
Thoughts are neither qualities nor facts.” (Peirce, 78) Law introduces
into dual relations an element of order and regulation. For Peirce, the
possibility of law itself is founded on the possibility of a sign that
“stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or,
it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without.”
(Peirce, 80) This internalization of the external idea and law is located
in Freud’s concept of the superego and the category of pre-conscious
ness. Not only can Peirce’s categories be used to articulate the logical
movement of Lacan’s conceptions of the Real, the Imaginary, and the
Symbolic, but also to articulate the logic of Freud’s two topographical
structures: unconscious/conscious/preconscious and id/ego/superego.7
The id is already attached to the Real (Firstness), the ego to the Imagi
nary (Secondness), and the superego to the Symbolic (Thirdness). The
unconscious must be thought of on the level of Firstness, consciousness

on the level of Secondness and the preconscious on the level of
Thirdness.8 Thus, the unconscious id is without relation to any Other,
and knows no form of negation, while the ego of consciousness is
always taken in a dual relation with an object that excludes the media
tion of the preconscious superego of law and language.
Logical Time
Two texts will help to illustrate the logic behind all of these ternary
relations. The first being Lacan’s text, “Logical Time and the Assertion
of Anticipated Certainty,” and the second: Freud’s “Project for a
Scientific Psychology.” The goal being to read into these texts the
logical relation between the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic
orders.
In his text on logical time, Lacan formulates three logical stages: 1)
the instant of the look, 2) the time for understanding, and 3) the
moment to conclude. The first temporal moment is derived from an
existential theory of pure perception, the second temporal stage devel
ops the phenomenological relation of reflexive consciousness, and the
third logical time determines a Symbolic law of action.
Lacan begins his text with the elaboration of a logical game that
takes the form of a prisoner’s dilemma:
A prison warden has three select prisoners summoned and an

nounces to them the following: “ For reasons 1 need not make known
now, gentlemen, I must set one of you free. In order to decide whom,
I will entrust the outcome to a test which you will kindly undergo.
There are three of you present. I have here five disks differing only
in color: three white and two black. Without letting you know which
I have chosen, I shall fasten one of them to each of you between his
shoulders; outside, that is, your direct visual field— any indirect
ways of getting a look at the disk being excluded by the absence
here of any means of mirroring. At that point, you will be left at
your leisure to consider your companions and their respective discs,
without being allowed, of course, to communicate amongst your
selves the results of your inspection. Your own interest would, in
any case, proscribe such communication, for the first to be able to
deduce his own color will be the one to benefit from the dispensatory
measure at our disposal. His conclusion, moreover, must be founded
Introduction / 11
upon logical and not simply probablistic reasons. Keeping this in

mind, it is to be understood that as soon as one of you is ready to
formulate such a conclusion, he should pass through this door so
that he may be judged individually on the basis of his response.”
This having been made clear, each of the three subjects is adorned
with a white disk, no use being made of the black ones, of which
there were, let us recall, but two. (Lacan 1945, 4 -5 )
This logical puzzle can be solved first translating the black disks into
0 ’s and the white disks into l ’s and then by articulating the three
possible combinations of disks: 1) 001, 2) O il, and 3) 111.
Lacan argues that in the instant of the look, each subject will say to
himself, “Being opposite two blacks (00), one knows that one is white
( I ) .’5 However, this first possibility (001) is excluded, because each
person sees two white disks. Thus, after the first logical moment, there
are only two possibilities left (011, 111). The primary time of the Real,
therefore, brings no knowledge in itself, but rather, is founded on the
exclusion of certain possibilities. Furthermore, in this time of pure
perception, no one knows who they are, or if the Other’s know who
they are.
in the secondary time for understanding, each subject thinks, if “i
were black (0), the two whites (11) I see would waste no time realizing
they are whites.” This second subject is locked into a dual relation of
reflection, because the subject must imagine what the other subjects
are thinking. “ For the two whites in the situation of seeing a white and
a black, this time is the time for comprehending, each of the whites
finding the key to his own problem in the inertia of his counterpart.”
(Lacan 1945, 11) What Lacan underlines in this second logical time is
not only the reflecting relation between an ego and its alter ego, but
also the hesitation of each subject, which points to a subjective element
of doubt.
in the third logical time, each subject thinks, “1 hasten to declare
myself white (1), so that these whites (11), whom I consider in this
way, do not precede me in recognizing themselves for what they are.”
This moment to conclude represents an assertive judgement that the
subject makes about himself, it is because the subject realizes that the
others do not know what they are, that the subject identifies with them
and declares itself to be white.
These three logical moments will be examined by assigning a subject
to each logical stage, in the instant of the look, Lacan places the
impersonal subject of the Real, with the time for understanding, the
subjects are taken in the Imaginary relation of reciprocity and reflection

(mirroring), while in the moment to conclude one finds the subjective
and Symbolic assertion of the personal “I.” “Otherwise stated, the
judgement which concludes the sophism can only be borne by a subject
who has formulated the assertion about himself, and cannot be imputed
to him unreservedly by anyone else— unlike the relation of the imper
sonal and undefined reciprocal subjects of the first two moments who
are essentially transitive.. . (Lacan 1945, 1 3-14) For Lacan, the first
subject is a pure, impersonal it (id), which is then replaced by the
reflexive ego, and finally by the personal “1.”
This movement traces the logical progression from the un-SymboI-
ized, impersonal subject to the personal Symbolic ‘I.’ In the primary
instant of the look, the impersonal subject is equivalent to what Freud
calls the “id” or what we can translate as the “it.” On Lacan’s “schema
L ,” the subject, or id, is located in the position of the “S ,” representing
the place of the existential subject of the unconscious and infantile
sexuality.
In his text on logical time, this existential subject is contrasted to the
reciprocal dual relation between the ego and its Imaginary other. “The
former the impersonal subject expressed in the “one” of the “one
knows that,” provides but the general form of the noetic subject: he can
easily be god, table or washbasin. The latter (the undefined reciprocal
subjects) expressed in ‘the two whites’ who must recognize ‘one an
other,’ introduces the form of the other as such, i.e., as pure reciprocity,
since the one can only recognize himself in the o th er.. . . ” (Lacan 1945,
14) While on the first level of logical time, the subject is just a thing-
in-itself, by the time the second level of understanding is reached, there
is a dual mirroring relation between the ego and its object. Lacan adds
that the subjects are undefined in this time because they only gain
a conception of themselves through what they see reflected back in
others.
In clinical terms, this second logical time is best represented by the
narcissistic subject who constantly needs the approval and feedback of
others. For these subjects, all value is found in an external object or
person. However, in this logical game, every subject is a mirror for the
other subjects and so there is an infinite series of reflections without
any definition or stopping point. Each subject sees that the others are
white, but still does not know what it itself is. As a result, if the
narcissistic subject only finds value in the reflection of others, then it
finds no real value in itself. Its ego is nothing— nothing but what is
found in others.
Introduction / 13
This definition of the ego as nothing helps to anticipate Lacan’s later

definition of what he calls the object (a). This object is the inverse of
narcissism and consciousness. It cannot be perceived, yet it structures
the logic of the subject. In this game it is the nothingness of the ego as
represented by the black disk that every subject worries about, but
which, in the reality of the game, no one has. It allows for the game to
be possible because it is the unknown element that causes all of the
subjects to desire to know what they are.
However, because this object is only a logical place in the game,
it escapes the “time for understanding,” which is dominated by the
Imaginary world of consciousness and narcissism. Lacan will later
argue that the object has no specular image, just as the ego is nothing
but the imaginary object that is realized in consciousness.
What then breaks-up this Imaginary dual relation between the ego
and its specular reflected\other is the intervention of the linguistical
subject or ” 1.” “The T subject of the conclusive assertion, is isolated
from the other, that is from the relation of reciprocity, by a logical
beat. . . . Just as, let us recall, the psychological T emerges from the
indeterminate specular transivitism, assisted by an awakened jealous
tendency, the T in question defines itself through a subjectification of
competition with the other. . . .” (Lacan 1945, 14) The impersonal
Subject (S) of the instant of the look exists as a pure Being without a
defined attribute, while the reciprocal subject ( a --------- a') of the time
for understanding, is trapped in a mirroring game of self-reflection and
doubt. Thus, in order for the subject to overcome its non-knowledge
of its own attribute and the resulting doubt, it must anticipate its
certitude through the affirmation of its “ 1” in relation to the Other (A)
of language and law.
The “ I” is a purely linguistical marker that the subject uses in order
to represent itself. However, as the philosopher Hegel has pointed out,
the “ I” is at the same time the most universal and particular pronoun.
When we say “ 1” we refer to ourselves, yet anyone can say I. In this
sense, as Rimbaud has stated, “ I is an O ther.”
in this text, Lacan rethinks Descartes by dividing the “cogito” into
three logical moments: 1) One thinks, 2) therefore, and 3) I am. These
three logical moments are later restated by Lacan as the following: “ 1)
A man knows what is not a man; 2) Men recognize amongst themselves
to be men; and 3) I declare myself to be a man for fear of being
convinced by men that 1 am not a man.” (Lacan 1945, 18) If the
affirmation of masculinity is equated with the affirmation of having a
white disk, then the white disk represents the phallus, inasmuch as it
is the signifier of masculine sexuality. Thus, in the first logical time,

the subject is without the phallic attribute, while in the second time,
the subject places the phallus in the other, and finally, in the third time,
the subject affirms it for itself.
This logic leads us to state that the initial Subject (S) in the Real is
without the attribute of sexuality, while the subject of the second time
finds this attribute in the reflected other (a') in an Imaginary dialectic
of specular identification. This secondary relationship is then tran
scended by the Symbolic affirmation of the signifier of sexuality in the
Other (A). This final moment of the game is defined by Lacan as an
act and a judgment of certitude, which overcomes the doubt of specular
identification and the indetermination of the Real. In his second semi
nar, Lacan simplifies this structure by using the example of the guessing
game “odds or evens” in order to demonstrate this logic.
Suppose I told you that 1 would either place, or not place, a coin in
my hand, and you would have to guess if it were there or not. Let us
also suppose that we will play the game at least three times. The first
time, you would have to make a pure guess, because you would have
no prior information other than the rules of the game. On the second
turn, you would start thinking about what I did the first time and you
would have to decide if I would repeat the same thing or if I would
change it. On this second level, you are already thinking about what
I am thinking. This represents the Imaginary time for understanding,
because you have started to place yourself in my position on a psycho
logical level. During the third turn, you can begin to figure out the
different mathematical possibilities of my choice. You now have
enough information to start to make a Symbolic conclusion based on
the laws and the logic of the game.
For now, what we can derive from this early Lacanian text is the
logical relation between the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic
orders as it relates to the temporal movement from the originally
isolated impersonal id, to the reciprocal and reflexive relation between
the ego and its alter ego, to the interpersonal superego.9
Perception, Consciousness and Memory
This logical order can be, in turn, related to Freud’s early Project
which is itself divided into the three dimensions of perception, con
sciousness, and memory.10 On a primary level, Freud connects the
system of perception to a law of inertia and to the pure discharge of
Introduction / 15
excitation, which he connotes with the symbol “Q n” (the quantity of

neuronic energy). “In the first place, the principle of inertia explains
the structural dichotomy into motor and sensory as a contrivance for
neutralizing the reception of Qn by giving it off. Reflex movement is
now intelligible as an established form of giving-off.. . . This discharge
represents the primary function of the nervous system.” (Freud 1895,
296) Thus, on a primitive level, Freud defines the subject of excitation
and perception through the purely physiological process of a stimulus-
response or reflex action.
For Freud, the sensuous id is neither a psychological nor a social
being, but rather exists in the Real of nature. However, this primary
(physiological) response of the subject, to reject all forms of stimula
tion, is soon replaced by a secondary law of constancy. “The nervous
system receives stimuli from the somatic element itself— endogenous
stimuli— which have equally to be discharged. These have their origin
in the cells of the body and give rise to the major needs: hunger,
respiration, sexuality. From these the organism cannot withdraw as it
does from external stimuli. . . . In consequence, the nervous system is
obliged to abandon its original trend to inertia (that is bringing the
level to zero). It must put up with a store of Qn sufficient to meet the
demand for a specific action.” (Freud 1895, 297) Freud claims here
that the “primitive” subject is able to escape all external stimulation
through reflex, but is unable to do the same against its internal needs.
In order to deal with these needs, the subject must maintain a constant
level of stimulation that can be used for a future “specific action.”
This accumulation of stimulation demands a secondary form of
“resistance” that is set up against the primary discharge of excitation.
“The secondary function, however, which calls for the accumulation
of Qn, is made possible by the assumption of resistances which oppose
discharge; and the structure of neurones makes it probable that the
resistances are all to be located in the contacts, which in this way
assume the value of barriers.” (Freud 1895, 298) This secondary func
tion thus delimits a dual relation (Secondness) between a primary form
of stimulation (Real) and a secondary form of resistance and inhibition
(Imaginary). Later in Freud’s work, this pseudo-physiological process
of resistance and inhibition becomes translated into the psychological
defenses of the ego.
On the third level of memory, Freud introduces into his Project
the structural relationship of difference and overdetermination. For
memory to be possible, the original Real stimulation of a perception
has to pass beyond the resistances of the contact-barriers. Freud calls
these passages of stimulation “facilitations” or “traces” and he adds

that, “Memory is represented by the facilitations existing between the
psi neurones.” (Freud 1895, 300) That is, memory is derived from a
series of relations and not from positive elements. Furthermore, Freud
connects this system of relations to a system of differences. “. . . Mem
ory is represented by the differences in the facilitations between the psi
neurones.” (Freud 1895, 300) Freud’s theory of memory is structural,
because since Saussure, language has been defined as a system of
differentia] relations. “The conceptual side of value is made up solely
of relations and differences with respect to the other terms of language,
and the same can be said of its material side. . . . ” (Saussure, 117)
These other terms of language are located in what Lacan calls the
Other and can be symbolized by the signifying chain of differentia]
relations.
Furthermore, the signifying chain is itself always overdetermined
and Freud relates this to the interconnection of neurones. “ Every psi
neurone must in general be presumed to have several paths of connec
tion with other neurones. . . .” (Freud 1895, 301) The psi system is
thus, in itself, structured like a language where differentia] elements
are related in an overdetermined network of possible connections.
This theory, that memory is structured like a linguistical network,
will later reappear in Lacan’s argument that the unconscious is struc
tured like a language. Freud anticipated many of the ideas of structural
ist linguistics in his early conception of the way that memory works.
Unfortunately, too many of Freud’s readers have failed to see the
metaphoric and Symbolic value of his work, and have therefore taken
some of his pseudo-scientific arguments at face value, missing the
deeper meaning of his theories. On the other hand, Lacan often extends
himself to separate Freud’s scientific arguments from his more Symbolic
and mythical ideas. The third section of this book will show how the
concept of the death drive can only be understood if it is read as a
myth and not as a scientific theory.
Thus far, this reading of Freud’s Project has attempted to establish
the difference between the system of Real perception and the system
of Symbolic memory. This difference is mediated by the system of
consciousness which introduces the notion of quality into the world.
“Where do qualities originate? Not in the external world. For, out
there, according to the view of our natural science, to which psychology
too must be subjected, there are only masses in motion and nothing
else. . . .” (Freud 1895, 308) Here, Freud distinguishes between the
Real of perception and physical existence, which is determined by a
Introduction / 17
quantitative relation and his notion of consciousness, which introduces

a qualitative dimension.
This qualitative aspect of consciousness is, for Freud, determined
by the pleasure principle. “Besides the series of sensory qualities, it
[consciousness] exhibits another series very different from that— the
series of sensations of pleasure and unpleasure, which now calls for
interpretation,” (Freud 1895, 312) In this argument, Freud takes a
major step in the philosophy of consciousness (phenomenology) by
equating consciousness with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance
of displeasure. Later in his work, the concept of narcissism will account
for this connection between consciousness and the pleasure principle.
The Phenomenology of the Ego and of Consciousness
Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage will be used in order to determine

the relationship between the foundation of the ego, consciousness, and
narcissism. For Lacan, the unity of the ego is founded on the imagined
unity of the subject’s body. This ideal form or totality (Gestalt) first
must be realized in an external object or person. This means that
consciousness is always consciousness of an object or other.
To illustrate this relationship between the ego and its perceived unity,
Lacan uses the paradigmatic example of the first time that a child sees
itself in the mirror and realizes that it is a separate entity with a defined
and enclosed body. Lacan argues that this perception of the body as a
complete whole is imaginary because it is based on an ideal form that
has no holes or discontinuities, it is a Gestalt because the whole is
bigger than the sum of the parts. Furthermore, it is ideal because the
child begins to see its body as a complete and controlled form before
it has mastered its motor activity, in other words, the subject’s concep
tion of his self is first anticipated on the field of vision before it is
realized on the level of activity and movement. This phenomenon
explains, for Lacan, why Narcissus falls in love with his own reflected
image. His self-love is based on his perception of being complete and
whole, and therefore lacked nothing.
in his Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl
develops this same relation between consciousness, the ego, and the
introduction of unity into the field of perception. “ It is equally our
concern to characterize the unity of consciousness required, and there
fore necessarily required, purely by what belongs to the cogitations as
their own such that they could not exist without that unity.” (Husserl,
69) For Husserl, consciousness is dependent on the generation of a

form of unity.
in his text on narcissism, Freud introduces the ego as precisely this
“unity” that is added to the primitive Real. “It is impossible to suppose
that a unity comparable to the ego can exist in the individual from the
very start; the ego has to develop. But the auto-erotic instincts are
primordial; so there must be something added to auto-erotism— some
new operation in the mind— in order that narcissism may come into
being.” (Freud 1914, 59) Freud argues that the subject is born into the
world in a state of primordial auto-erotism, and it is only (in a second
period) that the unity of the ego comes into being through the secondary
state of narcissism.
Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage attempts to tie together a phenom
enological definition of consciousness with Freud’s theory of narcissism
by accounting for the imagined unity of the ego. The narcissistic ego
sees its perfect image reflected in the Other, and it is this ideal form of
unity that gives the subject the possibility of organizing its perceptions
and sensations through the development of a unified body image. Thus,
consciousness is always for itself, because the ego directs itself towards
its own perceptual field in order to appropriate the world and to re
discover the pleasure of unity in its self and in the world.
Husserl connects this “self-centeredness” of consciousness to the
way that the subject turns its “mental regard” towards other objects,
it is, in fact, the intentionality of the ego, which defines consciousness
for Husserl. Yet at the same time, consciousness can only be realized
in externa] objects and thus the ego is nothing in itself.
Returning to the Project, Freud argues that the first object for the
ego is always another subject. “Let us suppose that the object which
furnishes the perception resembles the subject— a fellow human-being,
if so, the theoretical interest is also explained by the fact that an object
like this was simultaneously the first satisfying object and further his
first hostile object, as well as his sole helping power. For this reason it
is in relation to a fellow human-being that a human-being learns to
cognize.” (Freud 1 8 9 5 ,3 3 1 ) The first object of consciousness for Freud
is the mother who simultaneously represents a satisfying, hostile, and
helping other, in this sense, consciousness is colored by the initial,
ambivalent, reflexive relationship between the mother and the subject’s
ego.
The subject first loves not only the object that helps and satisfies it,
but also the object which allows it to develop a sense of self and
consciousness. For Lacan, this mother is not necessarily the actual
Introduction / 19
biological mother, but rather any person or object which plays this
role of support and care.
The ambivalence of this Imaginary dual relation between the ego and
the (m)other results from the structure of consciousness and narcissism
always combining a part of sameness and reflection with an element
of difference. “. . . The perceptual complexes proceeding from this
fellow human-being will be in part new and non-comparable— his
features, for instance, in the visual sphere; but other visual percep
tions— e.g. those of the movements of his hands will coincide in the
subject with memories of quite similar visual impressions of his own,
of his own body. . . .” (Freud 1895, 331) In Lacanian terms, this
passage states that the reflecting specular image always contains within
itself an element of difference.
This dialectic between the specular narcissistic image in the Other
and the object of difference is apparent in the second stage of Lacan’s
logical time. In the Imaginary time for understanding, each subject is
divided between its Imaginary specular identification with the other
(“the two whites recognize one another”) and its fear that it may be
different (“what if I am black.”) This division as ascribed to the way
that consciousness and narcissism are structured by the opposition
between the other who is everything and the ego that is nothing.
This Imaginary division of the subject is only overcome, in Lacan’s
logic, by the decisive act of self-judgment where each subject declares
that it is white in front of the Other. This judgement then requires a
speech-act that is made for the Other. On a certain level, this is what
the analytic relation creates a space for— the freedom to affirm to
another person what one thinks one really is.
The Structure of Judgment and Difference
In Freud’s Project, this concept of judgement intervenes in a third

logical moment. “This dissection of a perceptual complex is described
as cognizing it, it involves a judgement and when this last aim is
attained it comes to an end. Judgement, as will be seen, is not a primary
function, but presupposes the cathexes from the ego of the disparate
portions. . . (Freud 1895, 3 3 1 -2 ) Judgement, on a Symbolic level,
is a judgement of the difference between the perceived object and the
wished for object.
Freud articulates three stages to this judgement of difference. In a
primary time, the object wished for is perceived through a hallucina
tion. uIn the first case: simultaneously with the wishful cathexis of
the mnemonic image, the perception of it [the wished-for-object] is
present.” (Freud 1895, 327) A constant theme in Freud’s work is
anticipated in this passage, that desire is first satisfied on the level of
hallucination. In the first chapter of this book, it will be argued that
this theory of hallucination defines Freud’s conceptions of the dream-
state, the unconscious and psychosis. In terms of logical time, it is in
the instant of the look that the subject perceives the lost object through
the hallucination of its desire.
In a second logical time, the perception only partially coincides with
the wished-for object. “In the second case: the wishful cathexis is
present and along with it a perception which does not tally with it
wholly but only in part.” (Freud 1895, 327) Here is the time for
understanding where the subject cannot act because it is plagued by
the idea that it may be black. In other words, it fears that there is a
part of itself that does not coincide completely with the other. Freud
adds that this non-coincidence between the perception and the wish
“. . . gives impetus for the activity of thought, which is terminated once
more with their coincidence.” (Freud 1895, 328) However, on this
secondary level of Imaginary consciousness, this coincidence between
the object and the desire can occur without an act by the subject. The
wished-for object can be imagined merely by the subject in a fantasy.
The second section of this book will demonstrate that one of the
predominant features of the neurotic subject is this division between
its demand to be like all the others and its fear that it is different. This
division of the subject results in the symptom of doubt, which prevents
the obsessional subject from acting. In contrast, what seems to define,
in part, the clinical category of perversion is precisely the ability of the
pervert to act on its desires.
The pervert is dominated by the third logical moment, where the dif
ference between the wished-for object and the perception is affirmed and
reproduced. “We now come to the third possibility that can arise in a
wishful state; when, that is, there is a wishful cathexis and a perception
emerges which does not coincide in any way with the wished-for-mnemic
image.” (Freud 1 8 95,330) This absolute difference between the wished-
for object and the perception of the object will later be connected to
Freud’s notions of negation and fetishism. The fetishist “negates” the
perception that females have no phallus by creating a Symbolic, substi
tute phallus. For Lacan, this substitute is a signifier that both affirms and
denies the presence of what the Other lacks. The subject’s affirmation of
having the phallus in the third logical time is then tied to the fear that it
Introduction / 21
does not have it. The play between the presence and the absence of the
phallic signifier determines the relation between the subject of sexuality
and the Symbolic order of the Other.
Perversion, Drive, and Discourse
In the third section of this book, will be Lacan’s argument that the
drive represents the dialectic between the subject of sexuality and the
signifying chain of the Other. Freud articulates this structure in the
Project when he develops a theory of the Symbolic order. “The forma
tion of symbols also takes place normally. A soldier will sacrifice
himself for a many-colored scrap of stuff on a pole, because it has
become the symbol of his fatherland, and no one thinks that neurotic.”
(Freud 1895, 349) For the soldier, the flag is a signifier which represents
his fatherland. This is the structure of the signifying chain which Lacan
defines by the axiom: one signifier (SI) represents the subject (#) for
another signifier (S2).
In Freud’s example, this means that the flag is a signifier (SI) or a
sign that only has meaning when it is put into a relation with another
signifier (S2), the fatherland. In other words, signifiers only relate to
other signifiers and not directly to things. Furthermore, Lacan adds
that subjects only can be represented through these signifying relations
which go beyond the consciousness and intentionality of the subject.
Lacan uses what he calls his “discourse of the master” to articulate
this structure of the signifying chain or relation:
S1 -------------------- _ S2
J
This formula indicates that the subject ($) is placed below the articula
tion of the signifying chain (S I --------- ►S2). In Lacan’s logic, it is lan
guage which is the master and the subject who is “subjected” to the
structure. After all, it is not the soldier who decided that the flag would
represent his fatherland, nor that a person should die to protect a scrap
of colored stuff.
Another example of this structure is given by Freud: “The knight
who fights for his lady’s glove knows in the first place, that the glove
owes its importance to the lady; and secondly, he is in no way prevented
by his adoration of the glove from thinking of the lady and serving her
in other respects.” (Freud 1895, 3) For the knight (#) the glove is a
signifier (SI) which represents an Other (S2). Like the flag, the glove
derives its signification only because it is related to another signifier
which is, in this case, the Lady. However, this signifying chain is
socially mediated and thus the desire of the subject is determined by
the desire of the Other, and in this way the subject is transcended by
the structure of the drive itself. Furthermore, the Lady, who seems to
be the object of the drive has her Real being negated and overcome by
being translated into the abstract Symbol of the Other.
This pushes Lacan to state that the Other and the Woman do not
exist because they represent purely formal or structural categories. In
this sense, the pervert is a structuralist at heart, for this subject always
attempts to bring the Other of law and love into its sexual activities. The
predominance of uniforms, scenarios, and contracts in sadomasochistic
relations displays the desire of the pervert to produce its sexuality on
the level of the socio-Symbolic order, which serves to challenge the
existence of the Other.
Lacan has tied this intervention of the Symbolic order in perversion
to the role of the father (pere-version). It seems that the sadistic subject
attempts to reproduce scenes of castration in his love relations by
affirming the law and voice of the superego or father. In perversion
there is most often an eroticization of law and language in the subject’s
attempt to be a father for another. One can say that the sadistic subject
affirms in the Symbolic moment to conclude that, “ I am the Other of
law and desire.”
The third section of this text will also tie this position of the Symbolic
Other to the death drive and the role of the father in the Oedipus
complex. For Lacan, the Symbolic father represents the law that tran
scends the subject’s demand for maternal love. The Oedipal structure
itself articulates the relation between the Real Subject (S) of sexuality,
the Imaginary (m)other (a') of narcissistic love and the social interven
tion of the Symbolic father (A) of law and language.
These three dimensions of Being (the Real, the Imaginary, and the
Symbolic) can also be used to examine the difference between the three
fundamental clinical categories of psychoanalysis: psychosis, neurosis,
and perversion. It will be shown that the psychotic subject is dominated
by the Real of his perceptions, the neurotic is divided by the Imaginary
dialectic between the ego and its object, and the pervert attempts to
sexualize the Symbolic structure of language and law. The structure of
the psychoanalytic clinic is thus, in itself, Oedipal because the psychotic
subject is the subject of sexuality and the unconscious (the child) who,
Introduction / 23
in a second logical time, attempts to establish the stability of its ego

through narcissistic love (the mother) and the phenomenology of con
sciousness which, in a third logical time, is transcended by the Symbolic
order of law and regulation (the father). Psychosis, neurosis, and per
version, therefore, represent ways to categorize the fixation of a subject
on one of these levels.
The final section of this text will articulate how psychoanalysis offers
a fourth alternative to these three dimensions of Being.
The object (a) and the Position of the Analyst
This fourth logical time will be related to Lacan’s notion of the object
(a) as it represents the presence of the analyst and the end of analysis
itself. This object will be defined as a logical element that is simultane
ously excluded and included in the three dimensions of the Real, the
Imaginary, and the Symbolic.
It is the encounter with this object in the transferential relationship
which provides the subject with the opportunity to question its position
in relation to the existence of its sexuality, the phenomenology of
its narcissistic consciousness, and the structure of the Other which
transcends it.
I
The Existence
of the Real
1
The Dream and the Psychotic Subject
Freud’s Interpretation o f Dreams not only attempts to prove the

existence of the unconscious, but also serves to articulate the structure
of psychosis. This psychotic structure is dominated by the Lacanian
axiom: “all that has been rejected in the Symbolic order returns in the
Real. ” In a psychotic state, as in a dream, what is radically rejected is
the Symbolic Other (A) or what Lacan calls the Name-of-the-father.
This Other represents the socio-Symbolic law of the father, castration,
and the desire of the Other. These Symbolic elements, which the subject
of the unconscious rejects (forecloses), return in the Real during halluci
nations, fantasies, and dreams.
The Structure of the Oedipus Complex
According to Freud and Lacan, the sexuality of every subject is

determined in relation to the Symbolic law of the father (the Name-of-
the-father). It is through the castration complex that each subject must
accept the intervention of the law and the desire of the Other, by either
affirming or denying the role of the phallus in the determination of
sexual identity. Furthermore, the fear of castration functions to resolve
the Oedipus complex and, therefore, to develop the internalized pater
nal figure of the super-ego.
In Freud’s conception of the Oedipus complex, a subject imagines
that he is in love with his mother and that the father represents a
threat to this Imaginary love relation. If the subject is to overcome the
symbiotic love for his mother, his father has to intervene and proscribe
the law against incest. This implies that the subject identifies with the
father and gives up his desire for his mother at the end of the Oedipus
complex. This also implies that the subject has become aware of sexual
differences and the possible loss of his own penis.
For many anthropologists, this law against incest represents the
27
defining element between nature and culture. The difference between

a natural order and a human cultural society is that humans have an
imposed a Symbolic law against incest. The need to pi event incest in
a cultural society, in turn, demands a series of laws, rituals, and myths,
that serve to keep members of the same family from having sexual
relations with each other. For Freud, the whole social network is
founded on the incest taboo and the law against patricide.
In his book Totem and Taboo, Freud argues that the first laws of
society came as the result of the murder of a primal father. The Sym
bolic law against patricide is tied to the subject’s other Oedipal desire;
to get rid of his father in order to have his mother for himself. These
two Oedipal desires are overcome through the internalization of the
superego which represents an identification with the Symbolic law of
the father. With the resolution of the Oedipus complex, the subject no
longer desires the mother, but identifies with what the father desires.
It should be noted that when Lacan speaks about fathers and mothers
in the Oedipus complex and its resolution, he is not necessarily referring
to the actual biological mother or father, but rather to the people that
play these roles in the Symbolic structure. This means that a female
could play the part of the intervening father, just as a male could play
the part o f the loving and caring mother.
Furthermore, this movement from the Oedipal love of the mother
to the intervention of the Symbolic law of the father represents the
logical movement from the Imaginary order o f love and fantasy to the
Symbolic order of desire and law. This movement can be traced on
Lacan’s schema L:
child, S a', mother
a A, father
In the position of the Real Subject (S), is the child; in the place of the
imaginary other (a'), is the Imaginary love for the mother; and in the
position of the Symbolic Other (A), is found the law of the father. This
schema can also be read in a developmental logic: in the first stage, the
child or Subject (S) exists all by himself, cut off from all others; in the
second logical time, the subject enters into a dual symbiotic relation
The Dream and the Psychotic Subject / 29
with the mother; in the third logical moment this relation is broken up
by the Symbolic law of the father.
The Function of Perversion
For Lacan, the acceptance of the law of the father is tied to the
clinical category of perversion and the determination of the desire of
the O ther.1 “The whole problem of the perversions consists in conceiv
ing how the child, in his relation to the mother, a relation constituted
in analysis not by his vital dependence on her, but by his dependence
on her love, that is to say, by the desire for her desire, identifies himself
with the imaginary object of this desire in so far as the mother herself
symbolizes it in the phallus. The phallocentrism produced by this
dialectic is . . . entirely conditioned by the intrusion of the signifier in
man’s psyche. . . . Freud revealed this Imaginary function of the phal
lus, then, to be the pivot of the symbolic process that completes in both
sexes the questioning of the sex by the castration complex.” (Lacan
1966, 1 9 7 -8 ) Lacan argues that it is the role of the castration complex
and the paternal function to introduce the subject into the Symbolic
order of sexual difference, where the desire of one subject (SI) is
determined by the desire of the Other (S2). This structure of the castra
tion complex has been formalized, with Lacan’s theory of the signifying
chain, in order to show that if the phallus is a signifier (SI), it must be
related in a differential relation to an Other signifier (S2).
For Lacan, the term “signifying chain” refers to the interrelations
between different symbols or words. This relation is called a differential
relation because one signifier can never signify itself, it must always
refer to other signifiers. For example, the word or concept “up” has
no meaning unless it is opposed to the term “down.” It is the difference
between words, not something inherent in each word, that gives the
words their meanings.
Furthermore, every word that is defined by its relation to other
words must also be considered within particular historical and cultural
contexts. For example, the term “liberal” in the nineteenth century,
meant something completely different than what it means in the twenti
eth century. For Lacan, the Symbolic context of a word is determined
by the other signifiers or words to which it is attached. Lacan labels
the primary word or signifier SI and the secondary word or context
S2.
In the structure of sexual desire, the primary signifier of every subject
is the phallus. However, since there is only one signifier of sexuality

(the phallus), the Other signifier of the signifying chain (S2) must
represent the absence of the phallus (castration). In this sense, the
affirmation of the presence of the phallus is tied to the possibility of its
absence.
This dialectic of the absence and the presence of the phallus is in
turn determined by the role of the father, who Lacan places in the
position of the Other signifier (S2) of castration. For it is the law of
the Symbolic Other, through the incest taboo, that serves to regulate
and socialize every subject’s sexuality and desire.
Furthermore, because the father of law (the Name-of-the-Father)
functions as a signifier, or more precisely as a signifying chain, he is
not the Real living father, but rather the dead father of tradition and
history. In other words, in Freud’s and Lacan’s Oedipal logic, the father
is a pure social function, whose living presence is transcended by his
Symbolic role. “How, indeed, could Freud fail to recognize such an
affinity [between death and the father], when the necessity of his
reflection led him to link the appearance of the signifier of the father,
as the author of the Law, with death, even to the murder of the father—
thus showing that if this murder is the fruitful moment of debt through
which the subject binds himself for life to the Law, the symbolic Father
is, in so far as he signifies this Law, the dead Father.” (Lacan 1966,
199) In order for the father to be internalized as the superego, his word
and law must become detached from his personal presence, then he
can become a pure signifier of social regulation. This also means that
the position of the father is not based on biology— whether he has a
penis or not— but on the Symbolic position that he holds in the family
structure.
In Freud’s myth of the primal hord, in Totem and T aboo, the father
must be killed in order for a society to be born. Freud implies there
can be no social order without law, and no law without guilt and
respect. It is the role of the paternal superego to represent the accep
tance of society and the link between guilt and legality by standing in
for the dead father. Lacan calls this function of the Symbolic Other,
the Name-of-the-Father in order to stress the connection between the
signifier and paternity.
Psychotic Foreclosure
In psychoses, it is precisely this function of the Name-of-the-father,

that the subject rejects (forecloses). “We will take Verwerfung, then,
to be the foreclosure of the signifier. To the point at which the Name-

of-the-Father is called— we shall see how— may correspond in the
Other, then, a mere hole, which by the inadequacy of the metaphoric
effect will provide a corresponding hole at the place of the phallic
signification.” (Lacan 1966, 201) The rejection of the function of the
Symbolic father also results in the rejection of the phallic function and
the social Other. The Name-of-the-Father can be equated to the Other
and the signification of the phallus. It is the role of these Symbolic
attributes to lead the subject beyond his initial state of autistic and
auto-erotic existence towards the affirmation of the desire of the Other,
which transcends the jouissance (unconscious sexual excitation) of the
individual subject.
In psychoses, the rejection of the Other not only results in a transfor
mation of the subject’s sexuality, but also in a distortion of the subject’s
relation to language and the social order. This allows an affirmation
of a strict relation between the regulation of sexuality and the structure
of language. It is the rejection of the Symbolic Other of language and
law that results in the disappearance of the phallic function, which in
turn can lead to the subject’s loss of sexual identity.
This same distortion of the Symbolic order of language and sexuality
is manifested during dreams. In Introductory Lectures on Psychoanaly
sis, Freud declares that the mode of expression in dreams is totally cut
off from the desire to be understood and is equivalent to a rejection of
the social Other. “A dream does not want to say anything to anyone.
It is not a vehicle for communication; on the contrary, it is meant to
remain ununderstood.” (Freud 1916, 231) The dream is itself autistic
because it is cut off from the recognition of the Other and the desire
to be understood.
This non-relation with the Other is evident in the lack of relations
within the discourse of the psychotic and the dream. “Thus the lan
guage consists, one might say, solely of the raw material, just as our
thought-language is resolved by the dream-work into its raw material,
and any expression of relations is omitted.” (Freud 1916, 231) The
symbol S2 represents these relations within language, but which are
rejected in the dream, and which result in a return to a primitive state
of language.
In this same text, Freud points out that in the dream there is also a
return to the period of infantile sexuality. “ Let us now being together
what our researches into child-psychology have contributed to our
understanding of dreams. We have not only found that the material of
the forgotten experiences of childhood is accessible to dreams, but we
have also seen that the mental life of children with all its characteristics,
its egoism, its incestuous choice of love-objects, and so on, still persists
in dreams— that is, in the unconscious, and that dreams carry us back
every night to this infantile level.” (Freud 1916, 210) Here Freud
draws an equivalency between the unconscious, infantile sexuality, and
dreams.
This equivalency is explained in The Interpretation o f Dreams where
Freud articulates his notion of regression. “Three kinds of regression
are thus to be distinguished: (a) topographical regression, in the sense
of the schematic pictures of the psi-systems . . . ; (b ) tem poral regres
sion, in so far as what is in question is a harking back to older psychical
structures; and (c) form al regression, where primitive methods of ex
pression and representation take the place of the usual ones. All these
three kinds of regression are, however, one at bottom and occur to
gether as a rule; for what is older in time is more primitive in form and
in psychical topography lies nearer to the perceptual end.” (Freud
1900, 587) On the level of topographical regression, Freud is referring
to the primary system of perception which implies a temporal regres
sion to the state of infantile sexuality and a formal regression to the
unconscious mode of expression.
This structure of regression can be inscribed onto Freud’s schema of
the mental apparatus that he develops in the final chapter of The
Interpretation o f Dreams:
Pet Mnem Mnem' Ucs Pcs
The logical order of this diagram goes from 1) the system of perception
(Pet) to 2) the primary memory system (Mnem) and 3) finally to the
secondary memory system (M nem ').2 The initial system of perception
represents the primitive Real of the mental apparatus which refers to
the unconscious, (Ucs) infantile sexuality, and primitive language.
The primary state of the Real is replaced, in a second logical time, by
an initial memory system (Mnem), which serves to generate perception-
signs that in a third logical moment are organized into a Symbolic system
of verbal associations. This secondary memory system (Mnem') can be
equated, in turn, with the preconscious chain of signifiers (S2). Freud’s
schema can be rewritten by adding Lacan’s symbols and by equating the
system of the unconscious with the primary system of perception, and
the preconscious with the secondary memory system (Mnem'):
Pet Mnen Mnen'
Ucs Cs Pcs
$ SI S2
R ---------------------- j --------------------- Sy
Sy
Freud’s diagram is transformed in order to articulate the logical pro
gression that begins with 1) the Real (R) subject (&) of the unconscious
(Ucs) and perception (Pet), which 2) in a second logical moment is
replaced by the Imaginary (I) system of consciousness (Cs) and the
primary signifier of difference (SI), and 3) in a third time enters into
the preconscious (Pcs) system of Symbolic (Sy) relations (S2).
This movement from the Real order of perception to the Symbolic
order of differentia] relations is determined by Freud’s theory of the
generation of thought. “ Now our thoughts originally arose from sen
sory images of that kind: their first material and their preliminary
stages were sense impressions, or more properly mnemic images of
such impressions. Only later were words attached to them and the
words in turn linked up into thoughts.” (Freud 1916, 180—1) This
logical progression from perception to words to thoughts traces the
movement from the Real order of sensual and perceptual existence to
the Symbolic order of language and what Freud will call the death
drive.’
The connection between the death drive and language is one of
Lacan’s essential interpretations of Freud’s work. Lacan turns to the
field of German philosophy, in particular the works of Heidegger and
Hegel, to show that there is an inherent association between death and
language. From Hegel he takes the idea that “ the word is the death of
the Thing” because language replaces lived experiences with the dead
letter of representation.4 In other words, because a “ tree” can be
discussed without the tree being present, the actual tree itself becomes
unimportant.
From Heidegger, Lacan borrows the concept of “ Being-towards-
death” in order to argue that the essential meaning of the subject only
comes into being through an encounter with death. However, since we
can never remember and discuss our own death, we only encounter
death through the death of the Other.
Furthermore, as will be seen in the third section of this book, Freud’s
theory of the death drive, as it is articulated in Beyond the Pleasure

Principle, is tied to his elaboration of children’s games and other forms
of symbolic representation, which attempt to master the absence of the
Other. Lacan argues that desire becomes humanized by being separated
from the dependence on actual things and people.
For Lacan, the Symbolic order of language and law is devoid of both
existence and jouissance (unconscious sexual excitement).5 In a sense,
this is simply another way of stating Freud’s theoretical opposition
between sexuality and civilization. For Freud, the sexual experience is
fundamentally without law and regulation, and maintains itself on an
auto-erotic and autistic level without relation to the social Other. If we
equate life to this primary level of the primitive Real, we must infer
that the opposing order of Symbolic representation can be equated to
the concept of death.
The Anxiety of Death in the Real
It is precisely this signifier of death that is often refused in the

formation of a dream. In one of the central dreams of The Interpreta
tion o f Dreams Freud recounts how a father sees his recently dead son,
who now appears alive and who questions the father, asking, “Father,
can’t you see that I’m burning?”6 This dream serves to fulfill the wish
of the father to deny the death of the Other.
This rejection of death is made possible by the father’s ability to
forget the past and to fit his desired object into a perception in the
present. “When the glare of light fell on the eyes of the sleeping father,
he drew the worrying conclusion that a candle had fallen over and
might have set the dead body on fire. He turned this conclusion into a
dream by clothing it in a sensory situation and in the present tense.”
(Freud 1 9 0 0 ,5 8 9 ) This dream represents the reversal of the structure of
the mental apparatus that we have just presented. The logical Symbolic
conclusion (S2) is no longer at the end of the mental process but rather
at the beginning, and the perceptual system which Freud defines as the
primary stage of thought is now placed at the end. Furthermore, what
aids this process of dream distortion is the transformation of a memory
of the past into a present perception. Returning to the schema devel
oped out of Freud’s diagram of the mental apparatus, its temporal
characteristics now can be determined:
Pet Mnen Mnen'
I
Ucs Cs
I I
Pcs
R I S
Present Future Past

The primitive Real of perception is located in the temporal present
of the instant of the look. The second logical time is based on the
intentionality of consciousness that is always projected towards the
future of the Imaginary time for understanding. The final logical time,
which Lacan names the moment to conclude, is defined by the affirma
tion of the Symbolic attribute that predates the existence of the subject.7
In other words, the Symbolic order of language and law is already
there before the subject is even born. Furthermore, language itself is
based on the possibility of memory which entails a retention of the
past.
In psychosis and the dream state, it is the lack of temporal difference
which often contributes to states of confusion and disorientation.
u. . . the rapid sequence of ideas in dreams is paralleled by the flight of
ideas in psychosis. In both there is a complete lack of the sense of
tim e.” (Freud 1900, 123) For it is time which provides the possibility
for the spacing and the differentiating between ideas. Without this
function of difference and deferment, the subject finds itself excluded
from its own thoughts, the subject becomes spoken or thought of,
instead of speaking and thinking.
On one level, what accounts for this lack of Symbolic difference in
the process of regression is the power of wish-fulfillment.” . . . ideas in
dreams and in psychosis have in common the characteristic of being
fulfillment o f wishes. My own researches have taught me that in this
fact lies the key to a psychological theory of both dreams and psycho
ses.” (Freud 1900, 123) We can examine this claim of Freud by turning
to his Schreber case where he develops a logic of psychoses that con
forms to the structure of dreams.
The Three Logical Moments of Psychosis
In the theoretical section of the Schreber case, Freud attempts to

uncover a universal structure to the etiology of a psychotic delusion.
In the primary position of this structure, Freud places the phrase, “ I (a

man) love him (a m an ).” This hom osexual object-choice is repressed
or foreclosed in a second logical time where the subject states, “ I do
not love him - 1 hate him .” After this reversal of love into hate, Freud
adds a third step to this process which is represented by the phrase,
“ He hates (persecutes) m e.” The subject cannot accept his own hatred
for the other and therefore rejects it. However, the subject, as Lacan
w ould say, still receives its own m essage from the Other in an inverted
form:
'He Hates M e’ S a'
a A ’I Hate Him'
This inversion of the m essage “ 1 hate him” as it moves from the Other
to the subject, is equivalent to w hat Freud calls “ projection.”
The final moment of the delusion represents a psychotic projection
or hallucination. “ The mechanism of sym ptom -form ation in paranoia
requires that internal perceptions, or feelings, shall be replaced by
external perceptions. Consequently the proposition “ 1 hate him” be
comes transform ed by projection into another one: ‘He hates (perse
cutes) me, which will satisfy me in hating him .’ Thus the unconscious
feeling, which is in fact the motive force, makes its appearance as
though it were the consequence of an external perception .. . .” (Freud
1911, 166) Once again, this structure represents the reversal of the
“ norm al” movement from perception to thought. Instead of the psy
chotic subject thinking that he hates the Other, he perceives that the
Other hates him.
These sam e three stages of a delusion can now be located within the
structure of a dream. Freud delimits three essential elements to the
dream -w ork: condensation, displacement, and representation.8 These
three functions are analogous to the three stages of a delusion.
1) The first figure or function that Freud develops in his chapter of the
Interpretation entitled “ The Dream -W ork,” is that of condensation.
Though the act of condensation a vast number of dream-thoughts can
be represented by a single dream element. “ . . . only a small minority
of all the dream -thoughts revealed are represented in the dream by one
o f their elements. . . .” (Freud 1900, 315) Thus in condensation, one
signifier (SI) represents the Other dream -thoughts (S2) for the subject.
Freud analyzes this process in his reading of “ The Dream of the
Botanical Monograph.” “Not only the compound idea, ‘botanical

monograph,’ however, but each of its components, ‘botanical’ and
‘monograph’ separately, led by numerous connecting paths deeper and
deeper into the tangle of dream-thoughts.” (Freud 1900, 316) Freud
thus considers the dream-thoughts to be structured like a linguistic
network of interwoven relations which can be represented by certain
number of overdetermined nodal points. Using Lacan’s mathemes or
symbols, this relation is formalized by stating that the nodal points
represent the primary signifiers (SI) that are related to associative
signifying chains (S2). However, in dreams and other unconscious
formations, the chains of associations are repressed or foreclosed and
only the primary signifiers are manifest. This form of distortion can be
written in the following way:
Sl_
S2
This indicates that the signifier of condensation (SI) substitutes for the
signifying chain (S2) of associations.
In his discussion of condensation, Freud underlines this dominance
of the signifier. “The work of condensation in dreams is seen at its
clearest when it handles words and names. It is true in general that
words are treated in dreams as though they were concrete things, and
for that reason they are apt to be combined. . . .” (Freud 1900, 330)
On the level of the free-play of the signifier, words are treated as objects
because they are dis-sociated from the fixed relations of the signifying
chain and their habitual significations. “ It is also worth mentioning
those cases in which a word appears in a dream which is not in itself
meaningless but which has lost its proper meaning and combines a
number of other meanings to which it is related in just the same way
as a ‘meaningless’ word would be.” (Freud 1900, 339) Here Freud
isolates the signifier from the signified and gives preference to the word
(S) over the meaning (s): s
2) In the secondary function of displacement, Freud indicates that
there is a transformation of value. “ In the course of the formation of
a dream these essential elements, charged as they are with intense
interest, may be treated as though they were of small value and their
place may be taken in the dream by other elements of whose small
value in the dream-thoughts there can be no question.” (Freud 1900,
341) Here is a reversal of value generated by a displacement in a chain
of associations. For example, with a paranoid formation the signifier
of love is reversed into the signifier of hate in the phrase, “I don’t love
him— 1 hate him.” Furthermore, Freud indicates that psychical value
always includes a judgement of consciousness. “ If we are considering
a psychical process in normal life and find that one out of its several
component ideas has been picked out and has acquired a special degree
of vividness in consciousness, we usually regard this effect as evidence
that a specially high amount of psychical value— some particular degree
of interest— attaches to this predominant idea.” (Freud 1900, 341)
Consciousness is represented by the interest and selection of a particu
lar idea in the same way that condensation represents the concentration
of several elements onto one particular signifier. Displacement, then,
represents a transformation of condensation and a movement away
from the psychical value of consciousness.
If we return to the schema, this movement is traced from condensa
tion to displacement by placing the selective function of condensation
on the level of consciousness and the transformational function of
displacement in the position of the preconscious chain of signifiers:
Pet Mnen Mnen*
Ucs Cs Pcs
condensation displacement
Condensation occupies the first system of memory because it is tied to

a signifier of psychical value, while displacement is related to the
associative network of preconscious relations.9
3) The third function of the dream-work is the representation of the
dream itself through the process of projection. “The foregoing has
led us at last to the discovery of a third factor, whose share in the
transformation of the dream-thoughts into the dream-content is not to
be underrated: namely, considerations of representability in the pecu
liar psychical material of which dreams make use— for the most part,
that is, representability in visual images.” (Freud 1900, 379) Here,
Freud is pointing to the transformation of Symbolic thoughts into Real
perceptions of a hallucinatory nature. “The only way which we can
describe what happens in hallucinatory dreams is by saying that the
excitation moves in a backward direction. Instead of being transmitted
towards the motor end of the apparatus it moves towards the sensory
end and finally reaches the perceptual system .” (Freud 1 9 0 0 , 5 8 1 )

Thus, the final stage o f dream -w ork, as in the case o f a psychosis, is
represented by the function o f regression and the generation o f a
hallucination.
These three elements o f dream -w ork will now be put into a series
which moves progressively from the condensation o f a signifier (S I) to
the displacement in the signifying chain (S2), and regressively to the
state o f perception. “The first portion was a progressive one, leading
from the unconscious scenes or phantasies to the preconscious; the
second portion led from the frontier of the censorship back again to
perceptions.” (Freud 1 9 0 0 , 613) This movement o f the dream can be
shown on the schema:
Pa Mnen Mnen'
Ucs Cs Pcs
3) projection 1) condensation 2 ) displacement
This diagram serves to articulate the normal movement from the pri
mary signifier o f consciousness (condensation) to the secondary signi
fier o f the preconscious chain o f associations which then results in the
regressive return to the initial state o f perception. In the Schreber case,
the function o f condensation would be represented by the phrase “ I (a
man) love h im .” This singular fantasy condenses all o f the relations
between the subject and the Other. This first phrase will soon be
displaced by the statem ent “ 1 hate him ,” where the value o f the phrase
becomes reversed. The final state o f the phrase would then be the
projected inversion o f “ I hate him ” to “He hates m e.”
This final stage o f the dream not only accounts for the perceptual
value o f a hallucination, but also explains how the dream escapes the
censorship o f the superego. “ But when the content o f the dream-
process has becom e perceptual, by the fact it has, as it were, found a
way o f evading the obstacle put in its way by the censorship and the
state o f sleep in the Pcs.” (Freud 1900, 613) The dream can avoid
censure precisely because Freud poses a binary opposition between the
primary state o f perception and the tertiary system of law and language.
Thus, the law o f the Symbolic O ther is rejected by the sleeping subject
when its thoughts are transformed into sensual representations.
For Freud, every wish-fulfillment represents this same function of

regression and hallucination. “An essential component of this experi
ence of satisfaction is a particular perception . . . the mnemic image of
which remains associated henceforward with the memory traces of the
excitation produced by the need. As a result of the link that has thus
been established, next time this need arises a psychical impulse will at
once emerge which will seek to re-cathect the mnemic image of the
perception and to re-evoke the perception itself, that is to say to re
establish the original satisfaction. An impulse of this kind is what we
call a wish; the reappearance of the perception is the fulfillment of the
wish; and the shortest path to the fulfillment of the wish is a path
leading direct from the excitation produced by the need to a complete
cathexis of the perception. Nothing prevents us from assuming that
there was a primitive state of the psychical apparatus in which this
path was actually traversed, that is, in which wishing ended in halluci
nation.” (Freud 1900, 605) Here, Freud draws a structural analogy
involving the primary state of the psychical apparatus, a fulfillment of
wishes, and the hallucinatory state of a psychosis and a dream.
In other words, Freud indicates that in an initial logical time of the
Real, the primitive subject fulfills all of its needs through the pure act
of hallucination. “Thus the aim of this first psychical apparatus was
to produce a perceptual identity— a repetition of the perception which
was linked with the satisfaction of the need.” (Freud 1900, 605) This
form of hallucinatory satisfaction excludes any form of social regula
tion or preconscious censorship. “When this is so, the watchman is
overpowered, the unconscious excitations overwhelm the Pcs, and
thence obtain control over our speech and actions; or they forcibly
bring about hallucinatory regression and direct the course of the appa
ratus. . . . To this state of things we give the name of psychosis.” (Freud
1900, 607) Freud’s logic forces us to state that the subject of the
unconscious is, by definition, psychotic because unconscious desire can
only be fulfilled through the process of hallucination. Furthermore,
Freud implicitly equates the primary system of perception with the
psychotic search for the identity of a perception and to the primitive
state of infantile existence.10 “What once dominated waking life, while
the mind was still young and incompetent, seems now to have been
banished into the night— just as the primitive weapons, the bows and
arrows, that have been abandoned by adult men, turn up once more
in the nursery. Dreaming is a piece of infantile mental life that has been
superseded. These methods of working on the part of the psychical
apparatus, which are normally suppressed in waking hours, become
current once more in psychosis. . . .” (Freud 1900, 606) Thus, the

schema of the logical development of thought must now unite Freud’s
theory of psychotic hallucination with the primitive state of perception
and the topographical system of the unconscious.
The Clinic of Psychosis
This structure of regression can now be applied to the clinic of

psychosis. What is found in many of these cases is that the subject
perceives in the Real, the Symbolic order of law and language that has
been rejected. This is demonstrated in “On Narcissism: An Introduc
tion,” where Freud connects the internal institution of the conscience
to delusions of persecution and observation. “ Recognition of this insti
tution enables us to understand the so-called ‘delusions of observation’
or, more correctly, of being watched, which are such striking symptoms
in the paranoid diseases.. . . Patients of this sort complain that all their
thoughts are known and that their actions watched and overlooked;
they are informed of the functioning of this mental institution by voices
which characteristically speak to them in the third person.. . . ” (Freud
1914, 7 5 -6 ) Freud declares that this delusional state represents, in
truth, an awareness of our normal mental functioning, but in a dis
torted form. “. . . a power of this kind, watching, discovering and
criticizing all our intentions, does really exist; indeed, it exists with
every one of us in normal life. The delusion of being watched presents
it in a regressive form, thereby revealing the genesis of this function
and the reason why the patient is in revolt against it.” (Freud 1914,
76) In psychosis, this preconscious function of the superego is projected
outward like an external perception.
The conscience in itself represents the subject’s Being-for-Others
which is embodied by the socio-Symbolic order of law and language.
“The institution of conscience was at bottom an embodiment of paren
tal criticism, and subsequently of that of society; a similar process takes
place when a tendency towards repression develops out of a command
or prohibition imposed in the first instance from without.” (Freud
1914, 76) This institution of conscience is renamed the Name-of-the-
father by Lacan and its rejection by the subject is held to be main
cause of psychosis. Freud’s theory is in agreement with Lacan’s theory
because Freud connects the hallucination of the voice of the Other in
psychosis to a revolt against parental criticism. “The voices . . . are
brought into the foreground again by the disease, and so the evolution
of conscience is regressively reproduced. But this revolt against this

censorial institution springs from the person’s desire . . . to liberate
himself from all of these influences, beginning with that of his parents,
and from his withdrawal of homosexual libido from these influences.
His conscience then encounters him in a regressive form as a hostile
influence from without.” (Freud 1914, 76) In psychosis, the superego
of the subject is externalized through the process of regression.
In the Schreber case, it is the voice (or rays of God) that represents this
regressive perception of the Symbolic superego in the Real. Schreber has
rejected the voice of his own father because of his homosexual desires
and this results in his father becoming transformed into the voice of
God. This symbolic Other tells Schreber that he is going to be castrated.
“Rays of God not infrequently thought themselves entitled to mock at
me by calling me Miss Schreber in allusion to the emasculation which,
it was alleged, I was about to undergo. . . . ” (Freud 1911, 116) Schreber
perceives the threat of castration in the Real instead of in the Symbolic
order because he has foreclosed his superego, or the Name-of-the-
father.
What becomes apparent in psychosis is the way that the Symbolic
order normally serves to regulate a subject’s thoughts and relation to
language. [However, in psychosis the structural relation of language,
which is in itself devoid of physical presence, is perceived in a physical
way.] Thus, Schreber transforms his linguistic network into a network
of nerves. “Some of these nerves are designed only for the reception of
sensory impressions, while others (the nerves of understanding) carry
out all of the functions of the m ind.. . (Freud 1911, 118) This system
of nerves is in turn located by Schreber to be in the Great Other, God.
“Whereas men consist of bodies and nerves, God is from his very
nature nothing but nerve.” (Freud 1911, 118) For Schreber, God is a
pure, linguistic network of signifiers that have become sensualized.
What causes such extreme anxiety in dreams, and in psychosis, is
the subject’s awareness that in front of this Symbolic Other the subject
is helpless and, to a certain extent, dead. That the psychotic subject
rejects this process of the Symbolic death drive by sexualizing its
thoughts and language in an attempt to render the Symbolic order
Real. The result of this process is the subject’s perception of its relation
to language in a hallucinatory form.
Language in the Real
Through the analysis of his own dreams, Freud not only encountered
the linguistic structure of the unconscious, but also encountered the
fundamental mechanism of psychosis. However, there seems to be

an inherent contradiction in stating that the psychotic offers a clear
manifestation of the structure of language, while simultaneously stating
that the psychotic rejects this Symbolic order.
Furthermore, if the unconscious is structured like a language, how
can the dream be the royal road to its discovery? Freud clearly separates
the dream from the logic of Symbolic relations. “. . . dreams have no
means at expressing these logical relations between dream-thoughts.
For the most part dreams disregard all these conjunctions.. . . ” (Freud
1900, 347) Yet, like a psychosis, dreams do serve to reproduce Sym
bolic relations. “Dreams carry this method of reproduction down to
details. Whenever they show us two elements close together, this guar
antees that there is some specially intimate connection between what
correspond to them among the dream-thoughts. In this same way, in
our system of writing, 6ab’ means that the two letters are to be pro
nounced in a single syllable. If a gap is left between the ‘a’ and the ‘b,’
it means that the ‘a’ is the last letter of the word and the ‘b’ is the first
of the next one.” (Freud 1900, 349) In other words, Freud is claiming
that dreams are indeed structured like a language, but this structure is
veiled by the translation of abstract, logical terms into perceptual
images.
Moreover, what is rejected in dreams is the possibility of expressing
any form of negation since dreams are presented in the Real which is
devoid of any form of absence. In this sense, the rejection of death, in
the father’s dream of the burning child, is the result of the transfer of
the Symbolic memory into the Real order of perception.
In conclusion, what defines the clinic of psychosis, and the temporary
dream state, is the predominance of the process of regression and the
resulting hallucination of a wish-fulfillment. This allows us to add that
the psychoanalytic clinic has its roots in the theory of psychosis and
the initial logical time of the primitive Real. The next chapter will
continue to investigate Lacan’s conception of the Real as it relates to
Freud’s theory of Sexuality.
2
Sexuality and the Unconscious
This chapter, will prove that the history of Freud’s discovery of

psychoanalysis is partly determined by the structure of sexual develop
ment itself. In his Three Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality, Freud
locates three periods of sexual development: infantile sexuality, la
tency, and puberty.1 These three periods of sexual development corre
spond to Freud’s three fundamental discoveries that were touched on
in the Introduction: 1) the extension of the concept of sexuality, 2) the
theory of narcissism, and 3) the death drive. In the initial period of his
work, Freud extends the concept of sexuality to include what he calls
“infantile sexuality.” In the middle period of his work he introduces
the theory of narcissism which accounts for latency and the general
process of desexualization. Finally, in the third period of his thought,
Freud introduces his notion of the death drive which accounts for the
return of sexuality in puberty in conjunction with the Symbolic struc
ture of the drive.
As stated in the introduction, the initial period of psychoanalysis is
dominated by the double discovery of the unconscious, The Interpreta
tion o f Dreams, and of infantile sexuality Three Essays. These two
discoveries are in reality the same because the unconscious is sexual
and the subject of the unconscious exists in the primitive Real of autism
and auto-erotism.
In the logical structure of sexual development, the initial state of
the primitive Real is replaced by the Imaginary phenomenology of
narcissism which results in the generation of the secondary period of
sexuality. In this second period of latency, the defensive functions of
inhibition and repression allow the subject to separate itself from the
initial state of infantile sexuality. Latency is therefore the antithesis of
infantile sexuality.
In the third logical time of sexuality, puberty, there is a return of the
repressed state of infantile sexuality in relation to the phallic signifier
44
Sexuality and the Unconscious / 45
of sexual difference. This phallic signifier is taken in the Symbolic

structure of the drive and the affirmation of the subject’s object-choice.
These three periods of sexuality can be formulated in a Hegelian
structure, because 1) the initial time of infantile sexuality represents
the thesis of psychoanalysis, which is then 2) repressed in the period
of latency (antithesis) and 3) returns (synthesis) in the final period of
puberty. Furthermore, this structure is analogous to the formation of
a symptom which begins with an initial sexual fixation, is followed by
the process of repression, and which results in a third logical moment
in the return of the repressed.
Infantile Sexuality
The initial argument in Freud’s Three Essays is an articulation and

critique of the popular opinion of sexuality. “ Popular opinion has quite
definite ideas about the nature and characteristics of this sexual instinct.
It is generally understood to be absent in childhood, to set in at the
time of puberty in connection with the process of coming to maturity
and to be revealed in the manifestation of an irresistible attraction
exercised by one sex upon the other; while its aim is presumed to be
sexual union, or all events leading in that direction.” (Freud 1905, 1)
Normal sexuality is considered to begin with the period of puberty
where the generation of sexual differences is taken in the structure of
sexual desire.
Lacan’s “discourse of the master,” will be used to formalize this
“normal” conception of sexuality:
SI - - - - - - - - ► S 2
X <a)
This formula states that in the normal form of sexuality, one sex
(SI) manifests an irresistible attraction on the Other sex (S2). In this
structure, each sex can be considered to be a signifier that is placed in
a differential relation with the signifier of the Other sex. This means
that masculinity is defined in relation to and in opposition to femininity
and vice versa.
Freud considers only one signifier of sexuality, the phallus, and that
46 / Between Philosophy an d Psychoanalysis
The W oman is it and The M an has it. This forces Lacan to state that
the normal form of sexuality is in reality the norm-of-the-male and it
is this Symbolic form of norm-male-ity that is supposed to come into
being during the period of puberty.
Freud him self criticizes this theory by positing an initial state of
sexuality that is not tied to this Symbolic discourse of the Other. “ . . .
Psycho-analysis considers that a choice of an object independently of
its sex— freedom to range equally over male and female objects— as it
is found in childhood, in primitive states of society and early periods
o f history, is the original basis from which, as a result of the restriction
in one direction or the other, both the norm al and the inverted types
develop.” (Freud 1905 11—2, note added in 1915) For Freud, there is
a primitive period of sexuality which corresponds to a primitive state
o f history where the subject is free to choose a sexual object regardless
o f its sex and it is only in a later period that the restriction of the object-
choice comes into being.
This theory of the initial liberty of the existential subject of sexuality
pushes Freud to posit a primary stage of polym orphous perversion.
“ The conclusion now presents itself to us that there is indeed something
innate lying behind the perversions but that it is som ething innate in
everyone, though as a disposition it may vary in its intensity and may
be increased by the influences of actual life. What is in question are the
innate constitutional roots of the sexual instinct. In one class of cases
(the perversions) these roots may grow into the actual vehicles of sexual
activity; in others they may be submitted to an insufficient suppression
(repression) and thus be able in a roundabout way to attract a consider
able portion of sexual energy onto themselves as sym ptom s; while in
the m ost favorable cases, which lie between these two extrem es, they
may by means of effective restriction and other kinds of modification
bring about what is known as normal sexual life.” (Freud 1905, 37)
Freud articulates a ternary logic of the psychoanalytic clinic which
posits: 1) an initial stage of sexual perversion, 2) followed by the
secondary period of repression and sym ptom form ation, and 3) super
seded by the ideal of normal sexuality. This ternary division of the
analytic clinic can be added to Lacan’s scheme L:
1 ) initial sexual S a' 2 ) secondary

perversion repression
a A 3) normal sexuality
In the Three Essays, Freud determines that the primary state of the
Real Subject (S) is defined by the polymorphous, perverse state of
infantile sexuality which becomes repressed in the secondary Imaginary
state of latency and narcissism (a'), and then returns in the period of
puberty in relation to the Symbolic norm of the Other.
The psychoanalytic clinic itself is determined by the different ways
that the subject reacts to the initial state of sexuality. “Thus our interest
turns to the sexual life of children, and we will now proceed to trace
the play of influences which govern the evolution of infantile sexuality
till its outcome in perversion, neurosis or normal sexuality.” (Freud
1905, 38) The next step is to attempt to transform Freud’s ternary
division of sexuality, perversion— neurosis— normality, into the series,
psychosis— neurosis— perversion, and the developmental stages, infan
tile— latency— puberty.
For what ties the initial period of infantile sexuality to the clinical
category of psychosis is the rejection of the Other that they both imply.
In the previous chapter it was pointed out that in psychosis and dreams,
the subject satisfies its needs through the autistic process of hallucina
tion. This period can be called “autistic” because it represents a nonre
cognition of the Symbolic Other of law, language, and desire. In an
analogous way, Freud posits that the initial form of sexuality is auto
erotic and thus there is no need for an other to intervene. “It must be
insisted that the most striking feature of this sexual activity is that the
instinct is not directed towards other people, but obtains satisfaction
from the subject’s own body. It is ‘auto-erotic’. . . .” (Freud 1905, 47)
In the initial time of the Real, the subject satisfies itself without the
need for anyone else.
Furthermore, Lacan indicates that even during the initial period of
oral sexuality, where the child takes the mother’s breast as its object,
this part of the other is experienced as a part of the subject itself,
because the infant has not yet gained access to the difference between
self and other. Freud, in turn, attaches this primary form of satisfaction
to a purely biological need of self-preservation. “The satisfaction of
the erotogenic zone is associated, in the first instance, with the satisfac
tion of need for nourishment. To begin with, sexual activity attaches
itself to functions serving the purpose of self-preservation and does not
become independent of them until later. No one who has seen a baby
sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed
cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture
persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later
life.” (Freud 1905, 4 7 -8 ) It is this blissful state of sexual satisfaction
that Lacan has named ‘jouissance’, and which persists in the uncon
scious of every subject in the form of desire. “The need for repeating
the sexual satisfaction now becomes detached from the need for taking
nourishment— a separation which becomes inevitable when the teeth
appear and food is no longer taken in only by sucking. . . . ” (Freud
1905, 48) The transformation of need and jouissance into desire is
represented by the separation of sexual satisfaction from the purely
biological function of nourishment.
In The Interpretation o f Dreams, Freud points out that the initial
form of satisfaction is always accompanied by the hallucination of the
object of desire. We can differentiate between the fulfillment of a wish
on the level of perception (hallucination) and need (auto-conservation)
from the retention of a desired object separated from the primary state
of the Real. Lacan articulates this differentiation with his concept of
the object (a) or the ‘plus-de-jouir’, which can be translated either as
a surplus of jouissance or a lack of jouissance. This object represents
the retention and loss of the primary object of satisfaction.
Lacan attaches this object to each of the different erotogenic zones
(oral, anal, and phallic) that Freud elaborates in Three Essays. The first
object for Lacan is the breast which the subject experiences as a part
of itself that is separated off when the mother leaves or weans the child.
As an object of pure biological need it is a Real part of the subject’s
existence and jouissance. However, once the child becomes separated
from the breast it becomes an object (a) of desire that is related to the
presence and the absence of the (m)other.
Anal Erotism and the Period of Latency
The second object and erotogenic zone that Freud introduces is the
anal object. “Children who are making use of the susceptibility to
erotogenic stimulation of the anal zone betray themselves by holding
back their sto o l.. . . One of the clearest signs of subsequent eccentricity
or nervousness is to be seen when a baby obstinately refuses to empty
his bowels when he is put on the pot— that is, when his nurse wants
him to— and holds back that function till he himself chooses to exercise
it.” (Freud 1905, 52) In the anal stage, the subject’s refusal of the
demand of the other results in a generation of pleasure and the feeling
of self-control.
In this secondary period, there is a dual relation that is established
between the intentionality of the ego and the anal object which resists
the demand of the other. “ The contents of the bowels . . . are clearly
treated as a part of the infant’s own body and represent his first ‘gift’ :
by producing them he can express his active compliance with his
environment and by withholding them, his disobedience.” (Freud
1905, 52) If the subject perform s the task that the other demands it
not only serves to comply with the other, but it also gains a mastery
over its own body.
In the Introduction, the concept of the body was related to the
narcissistic image of the other (a') which first gives the subject the
opportunity to organize its disparate sensations and perceptions into
the unified whole. What is found in the anal stage is this attem pt of
the subject to control and organize its world and perceptions through
the m astering of its body and the m anipulation of an object o f desire.
If we equate the ego’s organization of its body to the reflected image
of the other, we can tie Freud’s theory of the anal stage to his theory
of narcissism and the period of latency.
In order for the subject to control its body, it first must gain an access
to a conception of self as a unified whole (narcissism) and then it can
begin to restrict and control its perceptual and sensual excitations, “ it
is during the period of total or only partial latency that are built up
the mental forces which are later to impede the course of the sexual
instinct and, like dam s, restrict its flow— disgust, feelings of shame and
the claim s o f aesthetic and moral ideals.” (Freud 1905, 43) Freud
argues that the social barriers of aesthetic and m oral judgem ent receive
their foundations from an organic period of latency or desexualization.
However, these mental dam s that prevent the free flow of sexuality
are, in reality, the result of the transform ation of the subject’s originally
auto-erotic libido into the libido of narcissism .
Placing the oral and anal stages of sexuality on Lacan’s schem a L
will help to clarify the relationship between them.
1 ) Biological need S a’ 2 ) control of body
(oral)
object a A 3)
On the level of the oral object, the dialectic is between the initial state
o f the autoerotic subject (S) of biological need and the object (a) that
represents a leftover of infantile sexuality. With the movement tow ards
the anal zone, this structure becomes com plicated because the subject
now becomes a psychological ego that is attempting to control its own

body and the relation that it has to the other. The conception that it
has of its body is, in turn, connected to the image (a) that it received
from the other in the dual relation of narcissism. The anal object is
then located on the line ( a --------- a'), while the oral object is located
in the relationship (S --------- a).
The difference between the oral and the anal stages corresponds to
the difference between the initial stage of infantile sexuality and the
secondary state of latency. Latency represents a transformation of the
primitive level of Real sexual existence into the secondary level of
Imaginary consciousness and narcissism. In this sense, narcissism and
the reaction-formations that it requires are in opposition to the pure
sexual impulses. “They probably emerge at the cost of the infantile
sexual impulses themselves. Thus the activity of these impulses does
not cease during this period of latency, though there energy is diverted,
wholly or in great part, from their sexual use and directed towards
other ends.” (Freud 1905, 44) In reading Freud’s text on narcissism, it
can be seen how this transformation of the original sexual impulses
into the sublimated form of narcissism is dependent on the introduction
of the ideal of the ego, which serves to verify whether or not the subject
has complied with the demands of the Other.
Lacan has pointed out that this ideal of the ego represents the place
where the subject sees itself as lovable. Freud emphasizes this point
when he ties the period of latency to the anaclitic relation of love and
dependence. “All through the period of latency children learn to feel
for other people who help them in their helpless state and satisfy their
needs a love which is on the model of, and, continuation of, their
relation as sucklings to their nursing mother.’’ (Freud 1905, 8 8 -9 ) In
this dual relation, the subject is considered to be helpless, while the
other is in a position of complete power. Furthermore, this demand
for the mother’s love in latency is, in reality, a mere reflection of the
mother’s demand for love which is made towards the child. “. . . the
person in charge of him, who, after all, is as a rule his mother, herself
regards him with feelings that are derived from her own sexual life:
she strokes him, kisses him, rocks him and quite clearly treats him as
a substitute for a complete sexual object.” (Freud 1905, 89) This
relation between the child and the mother is reciprocal and reflexive.
For the love of one subject is reflected back in a complete form of love
by the other subject.
In this way the concept of maternal love is tied to the Imaginary
dialectic between the ego and the total image of the other. Freud points
this out when he states that the original object of the subject, the breast,
can be replaced by a totalized image of the other. “It is only later that
the instinct loses that object [the breast], just at the time, perhaps,
when the child is able to form a total idea of the person to whom the
organ that is giving him satisfaction belongs. . . . There are thus good
reasons why a child sucking at his mother’s breast has become the
prototype of every relation of love. The finding of an object is in fact
a refinding of it.” (Freud 1905, 88) The image of the (m)other (a')
represents an image of the satisfying object in a totalized and unified
form, and it is this Imaginary unity that the narcissistic ego searches
to find again in the other.
This relation is taken within the structure of the Oedipus complex
where the subject’s love for the other overcomes the social taboo
against incest. Freud adds that if the subject becomes fixated on this
level of Imaginary love, it becomes dominated by the insistence of a
neurotic demand. “It is true that an excess of parental affection does
harm by causing precocious sexual maturity and also because, by
spoiling the child, it makes him incapable in later life of temporarily
doing without love or of being content with a smaller amount of it.
One of the clearest indications that a child will later become neurotic
is to be seen in an insatiable demand for his parents’ affection.” (Freud
1905, 89) While in a state of psychosis, the subject is dominated
by the hallucination of its wished-for object; in neurosis, there is a
dominance of the narcissistic demand for love.
In the case of narcissistic personality disorders, there is often the
conflict between the subject’s demand to be accepted and liked by the
other, and the subject’s desire to be different from the other. On one
level, the narcissist wants again to find the Imaginary relationship of
love and understanding that it had with its mother, however on another
level, this subject attempts to assert its independence by refusing the
demand of the other. Latency, narcissism, and what is called ‘anal
retentiveness’ are in a sense different words for the same state, where
the subject is attempting to gain a sense of self by controlling his body
and refusing or accepting the demand of the (m)other.
Puberty, Law, and the Father
Beyond this narcissistic demand for maternal love, Freud poses the
cultural barrier against incest. “We see therefore, that the parents’
affection for their child may awaken his sexual instinct prematurely.
. . . If, on the other hand, they are fortunate to avoid this, then their
affection can perform its task of directing the child in his choice of a
sexual object when he reaches maturity.” (Freud 1905, 91) It is the

task of the parents not only to instate the law against incest, but also
to direct the subject towards its object-choice. Freud will later ascribe
this function of law to the father and the superego in his elaboration
of the Symbolic order of identification and sexual differentiation.
This presentation of the three periods of sexuality has been struc
tured thus far by the Oedipus complex itself. In the initial period of
Real infantile sexuality, it was determined that the subject experiences
its sexuality in an auto-erotic and autistic way. In a second time, the
Imaginary dialectic of narcissism and maternal love in the period of
latency was introduced, and in the third period of puberty, the interven
tion of the paternal function and the derivation of a non-incestuous
object-choice has begun to be articulated. This structure moves from
1) the Real satisfaction of the infant, to 2) the Imaginary love of the
mother and 3) to the Symbolic law of the father.
Freud elaborates this movement from the original state of auto
erotism to the third period of object-choice in the third chapter of
Three Essays. “With the arrival of puberty, changes set in which are
destined to give infantile sexuality life its final, normal shape. The
sexual instinct has hitherto been predominately auto-erotic; it now
finds a sexual object. Its activity has hitherto been derived from a
number of separate instincts and erotogenic zones, which indepen
dently of one another, have pursued a certain sort of pleasure as their
sole sexual aim. Now, however, a new sexual aim appears, and all the
component instincts combine to attain it, while the erotogenic zones
become subordinated to the primacy of the genital zone. Since the new
sexual aim assigns very different functions to the two sexes, their sexual
development now diverges greatly.” (Freud 1905, 73) The period of
puberty introduces not only an object-choice and the primacy of the
genital zone, but also serves to introduce the Symbolic dialectic of
sexual difference.
Freud’s theory of the development of sexuality clearly traces a path
which begins with the auto-erotic subject of sexuality and ends with
the ‘altruistic’ act of social reproduction. “The sexual instinct is now
subordinated to the reproductive function; it becomes, so to say ‘altru
istic’.” (Freud 1905, 73) In other words, the sexuality of the individual
subject becomes transcended by the demand of the social Other. This
social demand is in turn related to the phallic function and the genera
tion of the difference between the sexes.
In a note that was added in 1923, Freud introduces the distinction
between the phallic phase of sexuality and the genital stage, which helps
to articulate the difference between masculine and feminine sexuality
within psychoanalytic theory.2 “This phase, which already deserves to

be described as genital, presents a sexual object and some degree of
convergence of the sexual impulses upon that object; but it is differen
tiated from the final organization of sexual maturity in one essential
respect. For it knows only one kind of genital: the male one. For that
reason 1 have named it the ‘phallic’ stage of organization.” (Freud
1905, 65—6, note 2) This means that we must differentiate between
the primary signifier (SI) of sexuality, the phallus, and a secondary
signifier (S2) which relates to the genital zone itself.3
This second signifier of sexuality introduces the concept of the sexu
ality of the Other. Other here means not only the social Other of
language and law, but also the Other sex. This Other is, in turn, at
odds with the sexuality of the phallus which represents the sexuality
of the One.
Freud develops this difference between the sexuality of the One (SI)
and that of the Other (S2) when he elaborates two stages of infantile
masturbation. He argues that the initial form of genital sexuality is
centered on the individual act of masturbation which Freud ties to a
masculine instinct for mastery. “The preference for the hand which is
shown by boys is already evidence of the important contribution which
the instinct for mastery is destined to make to masculine sexual activ
ity.” (Freud 1905, 54) Following Lacan, it can be stated that this
primary attempt of sexual mastery is embodied in the master signifier,
the phallus, which introduces the act of master-bation. The phallus
serves to localize all of the subject’s sexuality under the heading of One
sexual signifier.
This dominance of the One signifier of sexuality also serves to struc
ture the localization of the neurotic symptom for Freud. “An important
addition to our knowledge of the sexual instinct in certain people who
at least approximate to the normal can be obtained from a source
which can only be obtained in one particular w ay.. . . I mean expressly
to assert that contribution is the most important and only constant
source of energy of the neurosis and that in consequence the sexual
life of the persons in question is expressed— whether exclusively or
principally or only partly in symptoms. . . . The symptoms constitute
the sexual life of the patient.” (Freud 1905, 29) Therefore, like the
phallus, the neurotic symptom serves to represent the sexuality of the
subject by limiting its sexual excitation (jouissance) to one particular
organ or signifier.
What then differentiates the perverse from the neurotic, is the varia
tion of the perverts object-choice. In perversion there is a movement
beyond the symptomatic fixation on the sexuality of the One towards
the variability of the sexuality of the Other. Furthermore, a defense

against the desire and intervention of the Other is found in the symp
toms of neurotics. For what the neurotic refuses to give up is the
security and reliability of its own signifier of sexuality which is always
there when it is needed. In this sense, the symptom represents a limit
to sexuality which the subject can use to reenforce its sense of self in
relation to an other.
For Lacan there is a fundamental opposition between the jouissance
of the One and the jouissance of the Other.4 The jouissance of the One
is represented by this conjunction of masturbation, the phallus, and
the refusal of the desire of the Other,5 which determines the neurotic
symptom. The jouissance of the Other is demanded by the superego
and refers to the desire to have a relation with the Other.
Freud adds that in order for the subject to overcome the primary state
of masturbatory sexuality (the jouissance of the One), it is necessary for
there to be an overvaluation of the sexual object in the Other. “The
appreciation extends to the whole body of the sexual object and tends
to involve every sensation derived from it. The same overvaluation
spreads into the psychological sphere: the subject becomes as it were
infatuated (that is, his powers of judgement are weakened) by the
mental achievements and perfections of the sexual object and he sub
mits to the latter’s judgements with credulity. Thus credulity of love
becomes an important, if not the most fundamental source of author
ity.” (Freud 1905, 16) Freud bases the love relation with the Other on
a relation of authority. In fact, he will add a note that ties together the
overvaluation of the object to the relation of hypnotism and to the
‘parental complex’. “In this connection, I can not help recalling the
credulous submissiveness shown by a hypnotized subject towards the
hypnotist. This leads me to suspect that the essence of hypnosis lies in
an unconscious fixation of the subject’s libido to the figure of the
hypnotist, through the medium of the masochistic component of the
sexual instinct. . . . Ferenczi has brought this characteristic of suggest
ibility into relation with the ‘parent complex’.” (Freud 1905, 16, note
1) By connecting the overvaluation of the object to the relation of
hypnotism, Freud bases the possibility of a relation with the Other
on the perverse dialectic between masochistic submissiveness and the
authoritative law of the sadist. For it is the law of the father and the
submission of the subject which defines for Freud the prototype of
every relation of sensual love.
This theory is based on Freud’s recognition of the conflict between
the narcissistic, self-interested individual and the demands of the social
order which are defined by the desire o f the Other. For Freud, the only
w a y that the subject can be forced out o f its Im aginary w orld o f
dual relations is if a third party intervenes and introduces a law that
transcends the consciousness o f the pleasure-seeking individual. In
other w ord s, the Sym bolic principle o f reality has to replace the Im agi
nary principle o f pleasure. In the resolution o f the Oedipus com plex it
is the role o f the father to perform this act o f transcendence, called, in
this case, castration.
In the castration com plex, the narcissistic ego perceives the institu
tion o f the law of the Other as a threat to the unity o f its body. In this
sense, castration represents the imposition o f the desire o f the Other
and serves to efface the intentionality o f the ego.
In perverse relations, there is a sexualization o f this process o f castra
tion. T he pervert attempts to find a law o f desire that will serve to
regulate the sexuality o f the Other. The masochist demands that the
sadist order it around and forces it to com m it sexual acts against his
w ill. In turn, the sadist attempts to dictate to the m asochistic subject
exactly w h at must and must not be done. H ere, the sadist plays the
role o f the paternal superego w ho com m ands the subject to come in
its attem pt to sexualize the Sym bolic order.
W hat has so far been articulated is that the Being-in-itself o f the
infantile and psychotic subject is defined by the non-relation with the
Other. In a second time, this is replaced by the Being-for-itself of
narcissism and neurosis which then is transcended by the Being-for-
Others o f perversion. In the third chapter o f this book, this structure
o f perversion will be attached to the death drive and this clinical
category will be subsumed under the predom inance o f the Sym bolic
order o f law and language.
These different ternary relations that have been located in Three
Essays are now brought together:
Real Im aginary Sym bolic

Infantile Sexuality Latency Puberty
auto-erotism narcissism object-choice
oral anal phallic
infant m other father
psychosis neurosis perversion
In the rem aining chapters o f this book, an attempt will be m ade to

elaborate these ternary structures which are located within the founda
tion o f the psychoanalytic clinic itself.
II
The Phenomenology
Of the Imaginary
3
Consciousness and Narcissism
One of the most crucial works in Lacan’s “Return to Freud” is

Freud’s text “On Narcissism: An Introduction.” This essay not only
lays the groundwork for Freud’s theory of narcissism and its relation
to the formation of the ego, but it also represents a re-thinking of
certain essential clinical and diagnostic categories.1
Implicitly this text elaborates on the distinction between psychosis,
neurosis, and perversion by connecting these different clinical catego
ries to different stages of sexual development. Psychosis will be
attached to an initial stage of autoerotism where the subject’s sexuality
is connected to a withdrawal from the Symbolic Other and reality
principle. Neurosis will be attached to the subject’s attempt to replace
the loss of reality with Imaginary fantasy objects and idealized narcis
sistic relationships. While perversion will be equated with the overcom
ing of narcissism and the reattachment to sexual objects beyond the
inhibitions and repressions of the ego. Once again Freud attempts to
rethink the relation between the Real of sexual existence, the Imaginary
order of narcissism, and the Symbolic category of social reality by
localizing these different levels of Being in three different clinical and
sexual categories: 1) an initial state of autoerotic schizophrenia, 2) a
secondary state of neurotic narcissism and 3) a final period of sexual
perversion.
In the first section of the text, Freud clarifies the distinction between
schizophrenia and paranoia, in the second section he introduces the
relation between narcissism and the psychology of love, and in the
third section he concentrates on the intervention of the ego ideal as it
relates to the subject’s social conscience. The structure of the text itself
corresponds to the logical development of Freud’s thought by moving
from the psychotic subject of the Real, to the imaginary psychology of
the ego, to the Symbolic Other of social reality.
59
The Primitive Real of Autoerotism and Psychosis
Freud begins his text by connecting the clinic of schizophrenia to his

theory of the libido. “A pressing motive for occupying ourselves with
the conception of a primary and normal narcissism arose when the
attempt was made to bring our knowledge of dementia praecox
(Kraeplin), or schizophrenia (Bleuler), into line with the hypothesis
upon which the libido-theory is based.” (Freud 1 914,58) Freud affirms
that there is a primary period of narcissism, which is at the same time
normal and psychotic.
What defines this initial stage of sexuality and the clinical category of
schizophrenia is the subject’s withdrawal of interest from the external
world. In this sense, both the autoerotism of infantile sexuality and the
autism of psychosis are determined by a fundamental foreclosure of
the Symbolic Other. In this text, Freud does not write about a rejection
of the Other, but rather he writes about “a loss of reality.” However,
for Freud it is the love relation with the Other that defines the primary
way that the reality principle is internalized by the subject. It is by loving
others that the subject first becomes introduced into the Symbolic world
of law and desire.
In the psychotic state of schizophrenia and in the sexual period of
autoerotism, there is no love relation with the Other and therefore no
acceptance of the Symbolic reality principle. Freud adds that the way
that the subject first attempts to overcome this separation from the
Other is through the Imaginary world of fantasy. “A patient suffering
from hysteria or obsessional neurosis has also, as far as the influence
of his illness goes, abandoned his relation to reality. But analysis shows
that he has by no means broken of his erotic relations to persons and
things. He still retains them in fantasy; i.e., he has, on the one hand,
substituted for actual objects, imaginary objects founded on memories,
or has blended the two; while, on the other hand, he has ceased to
direct his motor activities to the attainment of his aims in connection
with real objects.” (Freud 1914, 57). For Freud the neurotic maintains
a relation with others through the generation of Imaginary objects of
fantasy. However, the neurotic does not act on his desires and his sexual
life is fixated on the Imaginary level of consciousness and fantasy.
This structure places the neurotic in a middle position between the
psychotic, who totally withdraws his libido from the Other, and the
pervert, who can act on his desire and form a relation with the other.
What distinguishes psychosis from neurosis is that the neurotic is
abie to replace Real objects with Imaginary objects. “He (the psychotic)
Consciousness and Narcissism / 61
seems really to have withdrawn his libido from persons and things in
the outer world, without replacing them by others in his phantasy.
When this does happen, the process seems to be a secondary one, part
of an effort towards recovery, designed to lead the libido back towards
an object.” (Freud 1914, 57) There are two stags to the psychotic
structure; there is the primary movement where the subject withdraws
all libidinal interest from the outer world (schizophrenia), and there is
the second period where the subject attempts to re-establish his relation
to the other on an Imaginary level of fantasy.
This structure can once again be articulated by returning to Lacan’s
schema L:
1) Psychotic subject S a' 2) Im aginary recovery
a A 3) Symbolic O ther
On this graph, the Real Subject (S) is diametrically opposed to the

Symbolic Other (A). Lacan affirms that the Real is impossible to Sym
bolize and that in the structure of psychosis, there is a rejection or
foreclosure of the Symbolic Other. It is only in a second period of
psychosis that the subject attempts to return to the Other, but at first
this is done on the level of an Imaginary fantasy which Freud argues
is inherently neurotic.
To this distinction between the psychotic withdrawal from the Other
and the neurotic fantasy of the other, Freud adds a third relationship
that is defined by the relation of love and submission. “We perceived
also, broadly speaking, a certain reciprocity between ego-libido and
object-libido. The more that is absorbed by the one, the more impover
ished does the other become. The highest form of development of
which the object-libido is capable is seen in the state of being in love,
when the subject seems to yield up his whole personality in favor of
object-cathexis; while we have the opposite condition in the para
noiac’s phantasy (or self-perception) of the ‘end of the world’.” (Freud
1914, 5 8 -9 ) The state of being in love demands a sacrifice of the
narcissistic ego-libido because the subject who is in love must give up
its own personality and consciousness in order to follow the desire of
the Other. In psychosis, it is precisely this transcendence of the desire
of the Other that the subject rejects and which results in the feeling of
the end of the world, which in itself is only a reflection of the primary
withdrawal of the subject’s libido from the Symbolic Other.
Freud’s logic is based on the distinction of three levels of the libido,

named: 1) the ego-instincts, 2) the ego-libido, and 3) the object-libido.
This first category of the ‘ego-instincts’ is badly named because it
represents the initial period of auto-erotism, which Freud claims exists
before the formation of the ego. “. . . it is impossible to suppose that
a unity, comparable to the ego can exist in the individual from the
very start; the ego has to develop. But the auto-erotic instincts are
primordial; so there must be something added to auto-erotism— some
new operation in the mind— in order that narcissism may come into
being.” (Freud 1914, 59) For Freud, the auto-erotic instincts are pri
mordial and what must be explained is how the formation of the unity
of the ego and the secondary state of narcissism come into being.
It was shown in the introduction that what causes this transforma
tion from the original subject of Real sexuality (auto-erotism) to the
secondary state of Imaginary narcissism is the phenomenology of con
sciousness, which can be described through Lacan’s notion of the
mirror stage. Lacan argues that it is the image of the Other as a
complete body that first gives the subject the belief that it is also a
unified object. However, this conception of unity is actually an illusion
that can be explained through the visual organization of the perceptual
field that the subject anticipates in the other of narcissistic reflection.
“The fact is that the total form of the body by which the subject
anticipates in a mirage the maturation of his power is given to him
only as Gestalt, that is to say, in an exteriority in which this form is
certainly more constituent than constituted, but in which it appears to
him above all in a contrasted size that fixes it and in a symmetry that
inverts it, in contrast, with the turbulent movements that the subject
feels are animating him.” (Lacan 1966, 2) Lacan sets up the dual
relation between the subject of pure sensation and perception who
exists on the level of the primitive Real, and the Imaginary relation
with the other, which is founded on the anticipation of a unified image
of the body.
In Lacan’s development of logical time, this secondary level of Imagi
nary experience occurs before the constitution of the Symbolic dialectic
between the subject and the Other. “This jubilant assumption of his
specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor
incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exem
plary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a
primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification
with the other, and before language restores it, in the universal, its
function as subject.” (Lacan 1966, 2) Before the Subject (S) identifies

with the Symbolic Order (A) of language, the image in the mirror (a')
gives it an ideal representation of its own Real existence and it is this
ideal essence that will determine the phenomenology of its con
sciousness.
For Lacan the ego of consciousness always anticipates an ideal form
of unity and totality that serves to reenforce the subject’s sense of self
and the defensive capacities of its ego. More so, the ego’s image of the
body is equivalent to the subject’s body of knowledge, because the
unity of the self is dependent on the establishment of unities in the
outside world and vice versa. In this sense, the possibility of conscious
ness is founded on the ability of the subject to perceive the object of
its world as stable and permanent entities. “. . . this formal stagnation
is akin to the most general structure of human knowledge: that which
constitutes the ego and its objects with attributes of permanence, iden
tity and substantiality, in short, with entities or ‘things’ . . . ” (Lacan
1966, 17) What then equates narcissism to the consciousness of the
subject is that the unity of the ego is predicated on the unity of the
objects that the subject perceives.
The German philosopher Husserl makes a similar argument in his
phenomenological theory of consciousness where he insists that a per
son is able to perceive objects in the world only because consciousness
directs its intentionality towards objects and isolates them against a
background of indifference. However, this perception of objects as
isolated and unified entities is based on an ideal organization of the
field of perception. The object for the ego is only an ideal form or
essence and not a Real thing-in-itself. Or in Kantian terms, the object
of consciousness is a subjective intuition defined by the a priori catego
ries of time and space. For people see what they want to see and what
they want to see is the unity of the world reenforcing the unity of the
ego and serving to mediate between the subject and the world through
the generation of ideal forms of representation.
In Freud’s text, this ideal foundation of consciousness is represented
by the Imaginary objects of fantasy and the megalomania of paranoia.
For Freud, paranoia is itself based on the subject’s distrust of the Other
coupled with an increased belief in the power of its own thoughts.
Freud defines the megalomania of the paranoid as, u. . . an over
estimation of the power of wishes and mental processes, the ‘omnipo
tence of thoughts’ . . . ” (Freud 1914, 58) The paranoid is fixated on
the level of Imaginary consciousness and fantasy, where its relation to
the Other is dominated by the ideal forms of narcissistic representa

tions. But remember that Freud considers this secondary state of the
libido to be only a form of recovery from a primal separation with the
world.
Perhaps the relations between the libido and Freud’s clinical catego
ries can be clarified by listing the different ternary structures discussed
thus far in this text:
1) Real 2) Imaginary 3) Symbolic

psychotic neurotic normal
loss of reality recovery and phantasy act on desire
autoerotic narcissistic object-choice
ego-instinct ego-libido object-libido
For Freud, psychosis is defined by the loss of Symbolic reality that

places the subject in the primitive Real where he is dominated by his
autoerotic and autistic ego-instincts. However, Freud considers this
primary state of autoerotism as predating the introduction of the nar
cissistic ego, and thus it is only with the secondary state of the ego-libido
that the possibility of consciousness and Imaginary fantasy comes into
play. Finally, Freud poses the third state of the object-choice as a
transcendence over the secondary level of narcissism. For the state of
being in love demands a sacrifice of the subject of its own intentionality
towards an acceptance of Being-for-Others.
This ternary structure of the libido is articulated in Freud’s study of
the Schreber case. 64Recent investigations have directed our attention
to a stage in the development of the libido which it passes through on
the way from auto-erotism to object-love. This stage has been given
the name narcissism. Its nature is as follows. There comes a time in the
development of the individual at which he unifies his sexual instincts
(which have hitherto been engaged in auto-erotic activities) in order to
obtain a love-object; and he begins by taking himself, his own body,
as his love-object, and only subsequently proceeds from this to the
choice of some person other than himself as his object.” (Freud 1911,
163) On the first level of pure auto-erotism, the Subject (S) exists in
the Real as a pure Being-in-itself. With narcissism, the subject organizes
his world and body into a unity (a') that can be considered a Being-
for-itself, while in the state of love, the subject must become a Being-
for-Others (A).
This movement can be traced on Lacan’s schema L:
1) autoerotic subject S a8 2) narcissistic object
a A 3) Symbolic object - choice
Once again it is the narcissistic relation between the ego (a) and its
image (a') that allows for the first mediation between the Real auto
erotic subject (S) and the Symbolic Other (A) and it is the love relation
with the Other that forces the subject to give up narcissism.
Sartre articulates these three states of Being in his Being and Nothing
ness.1 “ I exist my body: this is the first dimension of being. My body
is utilized and known by the Other: this is the second dimension. But
in so far as I am for Others, the Other is revealed to me as the subject
for whom I am an object.” (Sartre 460) In the ontological logic of
Sartre, the subject is born into the world as a purely existing subject
(Being-in-itself). Difference and relation only are introduced into the
world once the subject begins to reflect on its being and becomes
conscious ‘of’ itself. For to be conscious of something means that there
is a difference introduced between the object of consciousness and
consciousness itself. For Freud this added difference is the difference
between Real existence and Imaginary consciousness and it is consti
tuted by the ideal form of the ego as a coherent whole.
For both Freud and Lacan it is the secondary state of narcissism
(Being-for-itself) that introduces the possibility of unity into the being
of the subject. However, the subject only truly becomes a subject in
the third time of Being-for-Others. It is in this third time where, in the
relations of love and social reality, it is acceptable to become an object
for the Other. In other words, a subject affirms itself to be totally
subjected to the Other of language and desire.
Narcissism and the Psychology of Love
In the second section of his text on narcissism, Freud returns to this

ternary relation of the Real of sexual existence, the Imaginary of
narcissistic consciousness, and the Symbolic relation of love by examin
ing the differences of organic pain, hypochondria, and love between
the sexes. (Freud 1914, 64) He begins this section with the ‘negative’
experience of pain instead of the ‘positive’ sensation of sexual excita
tion, which defined the primary logical stage of the previous section.
“It is universally known, and seems to us a matter of course, that a
person suffering organic pain and discomfort relinquishes his interest

in the things of the outside world, in so far as they do not concern
his suffering. Closer observation teaches us that at the same time he
withdraws libidinal interest from his love-objects: so long as he suffers,
he ceases to love.” (Freud 1914, 64) In states of extreme pain, the
subject rejects the Symbolic Other and object-choice in the same way
that the psychotic withdraws from the external world.
Remember that Freud is defining the ‘external world’ on the level of
the Symbolic principle of reality which determines the subject’s Being-
for-Others. The conception of Being-for-Others can be elaborated on
through Sartre’s definition of the fundamental relations of language
and love. “Love as the primitive relation to the Other is the ensemble
of the projects which I aim at realizing this value. . . . In love, the lover
wants to be the ‘whole world’ for the beloved. This means he puts
himself, on the side of the world; he is the one who assumes and
symbolizes the world. . . . Language is not a phenomenon added on to
being-for-others. It is originally being-for-others; that is, it is the fact
that a subjectivity experiences itself as an object for the Other” (Sartre
4 7 7 —85). It is as a love-object that the subject first encounters the Other
who represents, at the same time, the universe of language and the
structure of social relations.
For Freud, it is only the extreme states of love and pain that allow
the subject to go beyond the narcissistic principle of pleasure. “. . .
whence does that necessity arise that urges our mental life to pass on
beyond the limits of narcissism and to attach the libido to objects? The
answer which would follow from our line of thought would once more
be that we are impelled when the cathexis of the ego with libido exceeds
a certain limit. A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but in
the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill.”
(Freud 1914, 66) Love, therefore, forces the subject to give up its
narcissistic ego in favor of the Symbolic relations with the Other.
The ego is conceived as a limiting and inhibiting power that seeks
to reduce the amount of stimulation that the subject encounters, while
the relation of love demands that a high state of excitation is to be
maintained. “We have recognized our mental apparatus above all as a
device for mastering excitations which would otherwise be felt as
unpleasant or would have pathogenic effects.” (Freud 1914, 67) The
ego must perform this task of mastery through the relationship of
narcissistic consciousness. In this sense, narcissism represents the nega
tion of the original state of autoerotic existence. In the primitive Real,
not only is there no Other, but also there is no unified object of
perception. The Imaginary state of narcissism introduces the first limits

and boundaries into the subject’s world and the ego can be defined as
inherently defensive and inhibitive.
In the state of love, the inhibitive boundaries of the ego must be
overcome and the subject’s intentionality and consciousness be re
placed by the transcendent order of the Other. The structure of this
third order of love represents a dialectical relation where the negation
(narcissism) of an original positive state (autoerotism) is then negated
itself (love). Freud defines this dialectical movement when he declares
that object-love represents an attempt to return to a lost state of
narcissism. “Complete object-love of the anaclitic type is, properly
speaking, characteristic of the man. It displays the marked over-estima
tion which is doubtless derived from the original narcissism of the
child, now transferred to the sexual object. This sexual over-estimation
is the origin of the peculiar state of being in love, a state suggestive of
a neurotic compulsion, which is thus traceable to the impoverishment
of the ego in respect of libido in favor of the love object.” (Freud 1914,
69) The love-object for the subject represents the ideal of the Other,
serving to replace the subject’s own lost narcissism through the idealiza
tion of the Other. The subject figures that “if I can’t be perfect let me
at least have a relationship with someone else who can be perfect.”
However, this perfect Other represents a substitute for the early Imagi
nary relation with the mother.
Freud continues by arguing that females tend to refuse this form of
anaclitic love and remain fixated on a narcissistic level. “. . . there
arises in the woman a certain self-sufficiency . . . which compensates
her for the social restrictions upon her object-choice. Strictly speaking,
such woman love only themselves with an intensity comparable to that
of the man’s love for them: Nor does their need lie in the direction of
loving, but of being loved; and that man finds favor who fulfills this
condition.” (Freud 1914, 70) The woman is placed in the position of
being the object of the Other’s desire. In fact, Freud implies that females
can only love themselves by taking on the position of the male. This
means that their desire becomes determined by the desire of the Other.
Freud also argues that women represent for men the lost state of their
own narcissism. “It seems very evident that one person’s narcissism has
a great attraction for those others who have renounced part of their
own narcissism and are seeking after object-love; the charm of a child
lies to a great extent in his narcissism, his self-sufficiency and inaccessi
bility. . . . ” (Freud 1914, 70) What makes the feminine position narcis
sistic for Freud is both its self-sufficiency and its inaccessibility.
This dialectic between the actively loving male and the passive female
love-object is connected by Lacan to the structure of neurotic desire.
He argues that the obsessional tends to place his love-object in this
position of impossibility of inaccessibility, while the hysteric tends to
place herself in the position of being the object of the other’s dissatis
faction.4
For Lacan this dissatisfaction of the lover is determined by the
structure of the drive which always moves around its object of desire
without ever attaining it. This object is in itself inaccessible, like the
nature of feminine sexuality, because it is defined by its relation to
desire which can never be fulfilled. For desire is always a desire for
something else and the object of a sexual demand always exceeds that
demand itself.
By using Lacan’s theory of the object (a), it can stated that the
inaccessible nature of feminine sexuality is in part due to the fact that
“Women” are placed in the position of being the cause of the desire of
the Other. As an object (a), the female has no specular image nor
phallic signifier.5 Her being cannot be captured in the mirror because
the field of representation is dominated by masculine desire. More so,
this female is always an impossible substitute for the mother who is
the initial lost object of every subject. In this sense her being is always
already lost.
From a certain perspective, the autoerotism of the Real, the narcis
sism of the Imaginary, and the object-choice of the Symbolic are all
ways that the subject uses to avoid the encounter with this object of
dissatisfaction. For in the psychotic, hallucinatory state, the subject
perceives in the Real this lost object and there is a form of satisfaction
that lacks nothing. With neurosis, the subject fulfills its own desire in
fantasy by taking the image of the Other as the representation of its
own lost object. Here, the specular image (a') is conceived as a pure
totality, also lacking nothing and thus is void of desire. It is only on
the third level of the Symbolic object-choice that the subject encounters
the negativity of desire, but this time on the level of the desire of the
Other. The subject’s loss becomes totally determined by the Other of
language and social relations.
With the object-choice and the love relation, desire is Symbolized and
transcended through the overvaluation of the object in the structure of
the drive and through the signifier of phallic sexuality. The masculine
overestimation of the feminine object can be seen as a final defense
against the enigmatic nature of feminine sexuality, represented by the
object (a) of desire itself.
The Ideal of the Ego and the Object of Psychoanalysis
In the third section of Freud’s text on narcissism, the dialectic be

tween masculine and feminine sexuality is related to the three stages
of sexuality that previously have been articulated. “The disturbances
to which the original narcissism of the child is exposed, the reactions
with which he seeks to protect himself from them, the paths into which
he is thereby forced— these are the themes which I shall leave on one
side.. . . The most important of these matters, however, can be isolated
from the rest and, as the ‘castration complex’ (in the boy, anxiety
concerning he penis; in the girl, envy of the penis), be treated in
connection with the effect of early sexual intimidation.” (Freud 1914,
72). For Freud it is the threat of castration that punctuates the different
stages of the subject’s sexuality. Castration forces the subject to give
up its initial state of narcissism (autoerotism), as well as the protective
nature of ego (narcissism), and the forced paths of desire (object-
choice).
The castration complex articulates the resolution of the Oedipus
complex and the intervention of the law of the father which forces the
subject to give up both its incestuous object-choice and self-indulgent
practice of masturbation. Furthermore it is through the threat of bodily
harm that the subject is brought to give up narcissism and egoism in
favor of the desire of the Other.6 This act of symbolic transcendence
includes a moment of anxiety and fear where the subject encounters
the existence of an object that has neither a body nor a signifier. In
order to present this object, Freud uses the paradigmatic scene of the
little boy who is in front of the female genitals for the first time and
realizes that a part of his body can be lost too. Once again, in the
theory of castration, feminine sexuality is placed in the position of loss
and unknowability for the male. However it is this encounter with the
lack of the phallus that will push the subject to find the phallus in the
Other (the father).
It is by idealizing the father that the subject is able to give up
narcissism and its incestuous love relation with the mother. To say that
the father has the phallus means that the subject can only have it if it
identifies with the Other. However, the subject only wants the phallus
because it is afraid that it can be lost.
On the level of feminine sexuality, this structure is complicated
because the female is said to identify with the mother who lacks the
phallus. Lacan adds that women do not want to have the phallus, but
rather they would like to be the object that the Other lacks.
In relation to the castration complex, Freud criticizes Adler for his

concentration on his conception of ‘masculine protest.1 Freud points
out that these two factors of masculine protest and castration do not
seem to be vital to the clinic of neurosis and represent a social valuation
and not a narcissistic structure. It is possible to agree with Freud, but
at the same time with Adler.
What Adler articulates is more closely associated to the clinic of
perversion than to the clinic of neurosis. This argument will be devel
oped further in the third section of this book. At this point it can be
argued that what seems to define perversion is the structure of the
castration complex and the insistence of the law of the Symbolic father.
In this sense, the anxiety concerning the penis can be connected to the
threat of bodily harm in sadism, while the envy of the penis can be
related to the masochistic demand for the law and signifier of the
Other.
Furthermore, in sadomasochistic relations and scenarios the attempt
of one subject to establish a law or contract that serves to predict
and regulate certain sexual activities in a prescribed way is found
repeatedly. Thus a sadist may dress up as a policeman or as a Nazi and
will order the masochistic subject to perform some task that is in
opposition to its own will or intentionality. Here, the sadist forces the
masochist to overcome narcissism and individual consciousness for the
desire and law of the social Other.
For Freud, it is precisely the role of the ideal of the ego that performs
this task of Symbolic transcendence. “We have learned that libidinal
impulses are fated to undergo pathogenic repression if they come into
conflict with the subject’s cultural and ethical ideas. By this we do
not ever mean: if the individual in question has a merely intellectual
knowledge of the existence of these ideas; we always mean: if he
recognizes them as constituting a standard for himself and acknowl
edges the claims they make on him. . . . We can say that one man has
set up an ideal in himself by which he measures his actual ego. . . . ”
(Freud 1914, 73—4) By becoming a subject to the social order, the
subject learns to take its own ego to be an object that is judged in
relation to the ideal of the Other. By judging itself, the subject becomes
divided between the intentions of its ego and the laws and ideals of its
superego.
Freud adds that the ideal represents a replacement for the lost narcis
sism of childhood. “To this ideal ego is now directed the self-love
which the real ego enjoyed in childhood. The narcissism seems to be
now displaced on to this ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, deems
itself the possessor of all p erfections.” (Freud 1914, 74) Lacan has
show n th a t it is necessary to distinguish betw een the ideal ego and the
ego ideal. T he ideal ego represents the im age of perfection w hich the
Im aginary ego of consciousness derives from its m irro r relation to a
reflected other. This is the relation a --------- a ' of L acan’s schem a L
and stands for the one-to-one correspondence betw een a p o in t in the
Real w o rld (a) and an ideal p o in t in the Im aginary o rd er of conscious
ness (a'). O n th e o th er h and, the ego ideal represents the Symbolic
function of the law of the O th er (A) an d serves to regulate and verify
the Subject’s (S) ego itself (a).
By retu rn in g to L acan’s schem a, this series of relations can be articu
lated m ore clearly an d is introduced by the distinction betw een the
ego-ideal an d the ideal ego:
Subject S a' ideal ego
ego a A ego ideal
In this stru ctu re, the Subject (S) is divided by its attem p t to establish
its ideal ego (a') on the level of Im aginary narcissism and the transcen
dence o f its ego-ideal (A), the latter serving to judge it in an ethical and
social w ay. For Lacan, “ . . . the Ichideal, the ego-ideal, is the other as
speaking, the o th e r in so far as he has a sym bolic relation to me. . . .
Sym bolic exchange is w h a t links hum an beings to each other. . . . ”
(Lacan 1953—54, 142) It is through the internalization of the ego-ideal
th a t the subject becomes a social being and subjected to the laws of
language and society.
The subject m ust idealize the O th er in o rd er to give up its ow n
narcissism . H ow ever, by idealizing the O ther, the subject runs the risk
of low ering its ow n self-esteem. “ Love in itself, in the form of longing
and d eprivation, low ers the self-regard; w hereas to be loved, to have
love returned, an d to possess the beloved object, exalts it again.”
(Freud, 1914, 78) O n the level of longing and deprivation, the subject
places the O th er in the position of the ideal and sacrifices its ow n
narcissism for the narcissism of the O ther. “ He w ho loves, has, so to
speak, forfeited a p a rt o f his narcissism , w hich can only be replaced
by his being loved.” (Freud, 1914, 78) T he desiring subject becomes
transcended by the O th er of love and in this process loses a portion of
its ow n intentionality and consciousness. H ere, the Symbolic ego-ideal
(A) triumphs over the ideal ego of Imaginary narcissism (a'). The
subject gives up its egoistic Being-for-itself in favor of Being-for-Others.
However, this relation of love only becomes a true Symbolic relation
of desire when the subject is willing to make this sacrifice of self. This
is evident in the position of the masochistic subject, who loses all feeling
of self-respect and allows itself to be humiliated by the Other. “The
state of being in love consists in a flowing-over of the ego-libido to the
object. It exalts the sexual object to the position of sexual ideal.” (Freud
1914, 80) The end point of love for Freud is related to the restoration
of perversion and the idealization of the object. However, the end of
analysis is in itself opposed to this final attainment of the sexual ideal.
In this text, Freud makes a strong argument against any form of
analysis that ends in either idealization or love. He believes that neuro
tics often attempt to idealize the analyst in order to defend against a
loss of self-esteem and narcissism. “This expedient is of special impor
tance to the neurotic, whose ego is depleted by his excessive object-
cathexes and who on that account is unable to attain to his ego-ideal.
He then seeks a way back to narcissism from his prodigal expenditure
of libido upon objects, by choosing a sexual ideal after the narcissistic
type which shall possess the excellences to which he cannot attain. This
is the cure by love, which he generally prefers to cure by analysis.”
(Freud 1914, 81) Here Freud opposes the idealistic and narcissistic
cure of love to the process of analysis. The neurotic tries to make up
for its failure to attain its own ideals by idealizing the analyst. For
Freud the process of analysis must reverse this idealizing tendency so
the end of analysis is founded on a fundamental ‘dis-idealization’ of
love and forces the analyst to give up the desire to be an ideal for
Others.
If the analyst takes this position of the ideal Other, it will cause the
analysand to become dependent on the analyst. “When, by means
of the treatment, he [the patient] has been partially freed from his
repressions, we are frequently met by the unintended result that he
withdraws from further treatment in order to choose a love-object,
hoping that life with the beloved person will complete his recovery.
We might be satisfied by this result, if it did not bring with it all the
dangers of an overwhelming dependence upon this helper in his need.”
(Freud 1914, 81) In the final chapter of this book, Freud’s critique of
the dependence on the lover or analyst at the end of analysis is coupled
with his affirmation of the need for independence and separation at
the end of analysis. In his early practice with hypnosis, Freud witnessed
the extreme dependency that was generated by this ‘perverse’ release
of repressions and inhibitions and the Symbolic object-choice that was

entailed.
Freud’s psychoanalytic technique has been defined by his initial use
of hypnosis and his continual movement away from it. Hypnosis serves
to artificially create a perverse love relation, where the analyst becomes
the sadistic Other who forces the masochistic subject to confess and to
accept certain laws of sexuality.
In his initial practice, Freud continually played the role of the father,
seeking to force subjects to submit to the castration complex and to
remember and Symbolize all of their past experiences. This process of
Symbolization is due to fail, for the ideal can never be fully attained.
In Lacan’s terms, at the beginning of analysis the analyst is idealized
by the patient because the analyst is placed in the position of the
“subject supposed to know.” Through the course of the analysis, the
analyst then loses this ideal position in the eyes of the analysand and
becomes represented by the object of the drive, which is the inverse of
the ideal. This object stands in for that part of the subject and the
Other that cannot be fully satisfied or Symbolized.
The very structure of analysis indicates a reversal of the Imaginary
dual relationship of narcissism. Once the analyst is placed behind the
analysand who is lying on the couch, the analyst has moved outside of
the subject’s immediate field of vision. This means that the analyst is
no longer an object to the subject’s immediate consciousness; in a
sense, the analyst has been abstracted from the patient’s Imaginary
order.
If the analyst refuses to engage in a give-and-take dialogue with the
patient, the analyst is no longer a pure mirror of reflection and reaction,
but rather a questioning presence that forces the subject to wonder
what the analyst’s desire is. Lacan argues that the analyst’s desire is at
the center of the analytic cure, however this desire must remain an
unknown for the analysand.
Most neurotics or narcissistic personalities continuously attempt to
anticipate what the analyst is thinking or what the analyst wants from
the patient. As Kohut and Lacan have pointed out, the narcissist uses
the Other as a mirror and will try to place the analyst in the position
of being an ideal representation or a mirror reflection of the subject.
The narcissist can only define itself by the response or feedback that is
received from the Other. Without the response of the Other, the subject
feels like nothing, as if it had no definition or form. This reenforces
Lacan’s idea that consciousness is always consciousness of the other
and that without that other, consciousness is reduced to nothingness.

In turn, nothingness is the reverse side of narcissism and consciousness.
On Lacan’s schema L, the relation between narcissistic consciousness
and nothingness is articulated in the dual relation between the ego (a)
and the image of the ego (a'). Without the reflected image of the other,
the ego is nothing. In fact, the ‘nothing’ is one of the names that Lacan
will give to the object (a). (Lacan 1966, 315) In the following chapters
the logic of this object and its relation to the ternary clinical division
of psychosis, neurosis, and perversion will be articulated.
4
The Logic of Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo represents Freud’s attempt to rethink the Oedipus

complex through the fields of anthropology, sociology, mythology,
and individual psychology. In the previous chapters, it was implicitly
argued that the Oedipus complex itself serves to structure the relation
between the Real subject of sexuality, the narcissistic relation with the
image of the (m)other, and the Symbolic intervention of the father.
Freud relates the ternary logic that determines the movement of
sexuality among a primal stage of autoerotism (infantile sexuality), a
secondary stage of narcissism (latency), and a third stage of the object-
choice (puberty) to three fundamental periods of human history: ani
mism, religion, and science.
For Freud there is a strict correlation between the development of
social reality and the development of the individual. He explicitly
formulates this relation between the individual and the social, in his
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. “The prehistory into which
the dream-work leads us back is of two kinds— on the one hand, into
the individual’s prehistory, his childhood, and on the other, in so far
as each individual somehow recapitulates in an abbreviated form the
entire development of the human race, into phylogenetic prehistory
too.” (Freud 1916, 199) There is a structural analogy between the
stages of individual sexual development and the movement of human
history.
For both Freud and Lacan, it is the Oedipus complex itself that helps
to determine the subject’s place within the structure of the Symbolic
order of human history and social order. With his myth of the primal
horde in Totem and Taboo, Freud translates the universality of the
Oedipus complex into a historical event that also serves to account for
the formation of a neurotic symptom.
The myth of the primal horde attempts to explain the origin of
society, religion, and morality through the murder of an omnipotent
primal father whose death by his sons causes them to create laws
75
against incest and murder. This myth can be divided into three periods:
1) the affirmation of the unrestricted sexuality of the primal father,
who 2) is killed or repressed by his sons, and 3) who returns in the
form of a totem which prevents a certain animal from being killed.
This three-part structure of the initial affirmation of sexuality, its
secondary repression, and a final return of the repressed is articulated
by Freud in his text on Schreber in relation to the formation of a
symptom. “ 1 The first phase consists in fixation, which is the precursor
and necessary condition of every ‘repression.’ Fixation can be described
in this way. One instinct or instinctual component fails to accompany
the rest along the anticipated normal path of development, and, in
consequence of this inhibition in the development; it is left behind at
a more infantile stage. The libidinal current in question then behaves
in regard to later psychological structures as though it belonged to the
system of the unconscious. . . . ” (Freud 1911, 170) The structural
analogy of the initial stage of infantile sexuality, the primitive system
of the unconscious, and the initial phase of a symptom is found.
This primary period will be called the primitive Real and is connected
with two of the first discoveries of Freud, the unconscious in the
The Interpretation o f Dreams (1900), and infantile sexuality in Three
Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality (1905). In Totem and Taboo, this
primary period of the Real is attached to the concepts of the primal
horde, the primal scene, the primary processes, primary repression,
primitive man, primal words, and original sin. All of these terms
represent Freud’s attempt to establish the logical priority of an initial
period of Real sexual existence and will be contrasted with the later
states of Imaginary and Symbolic organization.
The second period of the formation of a symptom introduces the
relation between the Imaginary realm of consciousness and the process
of repression. “2 The second phase of repression is that of repression
proper— the phase to which most attention has hitherto been given. It
emanates from the more highly developed systems of the ego— systems
which are capable of being conscious— and may in fact be described
as a process of ‘after-expulsion’.” (Freud 1911, 170) In this second
logical period is found the dual relation between that which is Real
and unconscious and that which is Imaginary and conscious. This
phenomenology of consciousness is tied in turn to the second discovery
of Freud, narcissism, as seen in the earlier reading of his text “On
Narcissism: An Introduction.” What connects narcissism to conscious
ness and repression proper is the introduction into the Real of an
The Logic o f Totem and Taboo / 77
Imaginary function of negation and difference that is based on the

generation of the ideal realm of the ego and the unity of the image of
the Other.
The third and final period of the symptom formation is defined as
the return of the repressed. “3 The third phase, and the most important
as regards pathological phenomena, is that of miscarriage of repression,
of irruption, of return of the repressed.” (Freud 1911, 171) It is this
last phase which presents the symptom itself as a compromise between
the initial state of infantile sexuality and the secondary state of repres
sion. Furthermore, as will be seen in the third section of this book, the
return of the repressed must be considered in relation to the Symbolic
structure of the death drive, a relation Freud articulates as his third
fundamental discovery in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
The death drive is determined by the conflictual relation between
the original existence of sexual excitation in the unconscious of the
subject and the later demand for a law of sexual activity that is required
by the Symbolic order. More so, the death drive serves to articulate
the transcendence of the Symbolic order over the Real living experience
of the subject and over the Imaginary realm of consciousness. In this
sense, the subject is dead in relation to the social order that stands
above it. This dominance of the Symbolic order in the life of the human
being pushes Lacan to state that the unconscious is structured like a
language and that the subject is born into a world that is already
determined by the Symbolic formations of language, law, and custom.
The Symbolic Structure of the Totem
The first chapter of Totem and Taboo entitled “The Horror of

Incest,” introduces a paradox in relation to Freud’s category of the
primitive as it relates both to the primal stages of Man and to the
primary period of infantile sexuality that effects every subject. Freud
defines this initial period of human existence as one that is void of the
socio-Symbolic order of language and law and he implies that in this
initial state of sexual existence, the subject knows no restrictions to his
sexuality and we can infer that the fundamental taboo against incest
is not recognized.
However, Freud quickly points out in this text that even if the
primitive cannibals did not have any kings or chiefs, they still respected
the incest taboo. “We should certainly not expect that the sexual life
of these poor, naked cannibals would be moral in our sense or that

their sexual instincts would be subjected to any great degree of restric
tion. Yet we find that they set before themselves with the most scrupu
lous care and the most painful severity the aim of avoiding incestuous
relations. Indeed, their whole social organization seems to serve that
purpose or to have been brought into relation with its attainment.”
(Freud 1913, 2) What Freud is saying is that first of all the primitive
beings were already submitted to a Symbolic order of law and regula
tion and secondly, that the taboo against incest was at the foundation
of the organization of that social order.
Like the structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Freud be
lieves that what differentiates a natural state from a cultural state is
the taboo against incest. For it is this taboo that creates the necessity
to structure the relations between individuals in society on the basis of
the totemic signifiers of alliance and kinship. “Among the Australians
the place of all the religious and social institutions which they lack is
taken by the system of ‘totemism’. Australian tribes fall into smaller
divisions, or clans, each of which is named after its totem. What is a
totem? It is as a rule an animal . . . which stands in a peculiar relation
to the whole clan. In the first place, the totem is the common ancestor
of the clan; at the same time it is their guardian spirit and helper. . . . ”
(Freud 1913, 2) The totem is a signifier that is related to the Other
signifier of the clan. It stands above the social group as a father-figure
that serves to regulate and organize the relation between clans through
the generation of a Symbolic system of interdictions and prescriptions.
On the level of the interdiction, the totem represents a sacred object
which can be neither destroyed nor consumed. “. . . the clansman are
under a sacred obligation (subject to automatic sanctions) not to kill
or destroy their totem and to avoid eating its flesh (or deriving benefit
from it in other ways).” (Freud 1913, 2) The totem represents the
Symbolic prohibition against the murder of the father-figure. For La
can, this function is called the Name-of-the-father and it is attached to
the presence of law within the realm of the subject.
Freud continues his text by pointing out that the totem not only
forbids the killing of a certain animal, but it also serves to eliminate
the possibility of incestuous relations. “Almost every place where we
find totems we also find a law against persons of the same totem
having sexual relations with one another and consequently against their
marrying. This, then, is ‘exogamy5, an institution related to totemism.”
(Freud 1913, 4) Between the functions of the totem and ‘exogamy,’ 1 is
what the semiotician Greimas would call a semiotic square:
Prescription interdiction
permissivity facultative
T h is sq u are represents the relation between fou r m od al categories o f

law : 1) P rescription— the necessity o f w hat m u st be done, 2) interdic
tion — the legal im possibility o f doing som ething, 3) perm issivity— the
p ossib ility o f d o in g som ething, and 4) facu ltative— the contingency o f
w h at one can do.
In a classical m od al sq u are, these fou r functions o f necessity (n),
im possibility (i), possibility (p), an d contingency (c) can be replaced by
the fou r logical quantifiers: 1) the universal affirm ation (A) a s in All,
2) the universal negation (E) as in none, 3) the p articu lar affirm ation
(I) as in som e, and 4) the p articu lar negation (O) as in not som e.
T h ese tw o different logical sq u ares can be su p erim p o sed in ord er to
determ ine the relations th at they generate:
n, A E, i
P» I O, c
T h e universal affirm ation (A) articulates the necessity (n) o f a certain

law which is in a con trary relation with the im possibility (i) o f the
universal negation (E). In the relation (n,A ), there is a p ro p o sitio n that
states th at all subjects are subm itted to a certain law while in the
relation (E,i), there is the refusal o f law itself. In L acan ian term s, this
is the fundam ental o p p ositio n betw een the Real and the Sym bolic.
L acan defines the Real as th at which is im p ossible to Sym bolize. T h u s,
the universal affirm ation (A) can be eq uated with the Sym bolic O ther,
and the universal negation (E) with the Real su bject w ho ex ists ou tside
o f the Sym bolic order.
Furtherm ore, there is a logical relation o f con trad iction between
the A an d the p articu lar negation (O ), and the E and the particu lar
affirm ation (I). For the universal statem en t, “ All is S y m b o lic” is d is
p roved by the existence o f the p articu lar negation th at in dicates that
n ot every thing is Sym bolic, w hile the universal negation (E) states that
“ N o th in g is S y m b o lic” and is denied by the p articu lar affirm ation (I)
w hich states th at “ som ething is S y m b o lic.”
Lacan has him self formalized these relations by creating his own
logical square o f sexual quantifiers that can be reproduced in a modified
fo rm :2
Exlx Axlx
Exlx Axlx
Here, the E x stands for existence, the Ix for the phallic function of
castration, the Ax for the universal quantifier All, and the bar represents
the logical function of negation. These four quantifiers can be read as:
1) E xlx— there exists at least one subject who is not castrated, 2)
A xlx— all subjects are castrated, 3) E xlx— there does not exist a subject
who is not castrated, and 4) A xlx— not all subjects are castrated.
This m odal square can now be superim posed onto Lacan ’s logical
square:
Exlx, n, I A, p, Axlx
Exlx, i, E O, c, Axlx
L acan ’s logical square represents a transform ation of the classical

m odal square because in the position o f the necessary (n), Lacan places
the particular affirmation (1) and states that there is at least one subject
(Ex) who says “ n o ” to the Symbolic dem and of castration (Ix). This
necessity of the exception to the law o f castration implies the possibility
(p) o f the universal application (A) o f the law of the Other (Axlx).
O pposed to this Symbolic Other is the subject of the universal nega
tion (E) who forecloses the Sym bolic order itself by establishing the
im possibility (i) of Symbolizing its existence. This impossibility pro
duces the contingent (c) element which is the remainder that indicates
that not all (Axlx) of the subject can be taken in the Symbolic order of
castration.
This structure can be further enhanced if it is com pared to the schema
L o f Lacan and his three fundamental categories of the Real, the
Imaginary, and the Symbolic:
Exlx, i, E, S - - -------------- a', I, n, Exlx

1) Real X \ 2) Imaginary
\
Axlx, c3 O, a — ------------ " ~ S A, A, p. Axlx

3) Symbolic
In the position of the Real, the subject of the unconscious and infantile
sexuality who exists outside of the Symbolic order is placed. The
universal negation (E) is defined by the impossibility (i) to Symbolize
the Real.3 This impossibility of the Real is opposed by the possibility
(p) of the universal affirmation (A) of Symbolic castration. It is the
function of the father as Other (A) to perform this intervention of the
law which ties together the function of castration to the resolution of
the Oedipus complex. In between the Real existence of the subject
and the Symbolic intervention of the Other, is the Imaginary state of
narcissism (a') as the necessary (n) existence of the particular (I) excep
tion to the law of castration. Finally, in opposition to the Imaginary
image of the other (a'), is the object (a)4, which stands in for the
contingency (c) of the particular negation (O) of the Symbolic order.
The object (a) represents the presence of an unsymbolized Real element
within the structure of the Symbolic order itself.
Before applying this structure to Freud’s text, it should first be
pointed out how Lacan equates the Symbolic order, not only to the
predication of castration, but also to the function of the father and the
structure of the death drive. The Name-of-the-father represents the
transcendence of the Symbolic order over the living existence of the
Real subject. Furthermore, this transcendence of the paternal Being-
for-Others also presents a threat of bodily harm to the subject and is
translated into a threat of castration and a separation from the narcis
sistic relation of maternal love.
In order for the subject to enter fully into this Symbolic order and
to affirm the universal demand for castration, it must risk its life and
surrender itself to the will of the Other. For what the Other demands
of the subject is its subjugation and ultimately, Symbolic death. In the
resolution of the Oedipus complex it is the father, or what Lacan calls
the Name-of-the-father, who plays the part of the Symbolic Other of
law and mediation.
Freud elaborates this relation between the paternal function and the
Symbolic order when he articulates the classifictory function of the
totem. “ For the terms used by them to express the various degrees of
kinship do not denote a relation between two individuals but between
an individual and a group. . . . Thus a man uses the term ‘father’ not
only for his actual procreator but also for all the other men whom his
mother might have married according to tribal law and who therefore
might have procreated him. . . . Thus the kinship terms . . . do not
necessarily indicate any consanguinity, as ours would do: they repre
sent social rather than physical relationships.” (Freud 1913, 6—7) The
Symbolic order of kinship relations represents a transcendence of the
Symbolic Other over the individual and physical relationships. Further
more, the Name-of-the-father does not represent the Real father, but
rather the group of all possible fathers.
On the logical square that was derived from Lacan’s schema L, this
function of the father must be located in the position of the Symbolic
Other (A) who determines all of the possible relations that a subject
can have within society. The father represents ‘exogamy’ itself, in so
far as he enforces the taboo against incest and directs the subject
towards the desire of the Other.
In the opposite position to the Symbolic Other is the Real subject of
the unconscious who rejects the law of the father and presents the
existence of incest within the structure. For incest is the logical contrary
to exogamy and the law of castration.
Implied by this dialectic between incest and exogamy is the persis
tence of an incestuous object in the unconscious of the subject. This
object exists on the level of the taboo and is in opposition to the totemic
function that nominates a sacred object. Returning to the new, logical
square, the relations of the totem, exogamy, the taboo, and incest
within Lacan’s theory of the master discourse can be formulated:
Totem = scared object Exogamy = relation

SI, Exlx, n, I, a1 A, A, p, Axlx, S2
Exlx, i, E, S a, O, c, Axlx, (a)

Incest = non-relation Taboo = excluded object
In the position of the master signifier (SI) is the nomination of the

totem, which represents the necessity (n) of at least one (I) signifier
of sexuality, which escapes the law of castration. This law itself is
represented by the possible relations of exogamy that serve to subject

the individual to the universality of the Symbolic Other (A). The S2
symbolizes the signifying chain and indicates that one signifier (SI)
represents the subject (#) for an Other signifier (S2). The first signifier
is the name of the totem and the Other signifier is the relation of
exogamy. The subject (#) is barred because this structure shows how
the living being in the Real is transcended by the Symbolic order in the
same way that incest and autoerotism are outlawed by the Symbolic
Other. However, the negation of incest by the father always leaves a
residue of desire in the unconscious of the subject and it is this residue
that Lacan names the object (a).
The logic of this object, which is not all (Axlx) taken in the Symbolic
structure of normal development, is articulated by Freud in relation to
the concept of fixation. “Psycho-analysis has taught us that a boy’s
earliest choice of objects for love is incestuous and that those objects
are forbidden ones— his mother and his sister. We have learnt, too,
the manner in which, as he grows up, he liberates himself from this
incestuous attraction. A neurotic, on the other hand, invariably exhibits
some degree of psychical infantilism. . . . The incestuous fixations of
libido continue to play (or begin once more to play) the principle part
in his unconscious mental life.” (Freud 1913, 17) These objects of
fixation represent a residue of the initial period of infantile sexuality
that survives beyond the Symbolic law of the Other.
The fixation is not the existence of infantile sexuality (jouissance)
itself, but rather a rem(a)inder of the primitive Real within the structure
of the Symbolic order. There must be a separation between what Lacan
calls the primitive Real of jouissance, which is placed logically before
the Symbolic order of language and law, and the post-Symbolic form
of the Real, which is embodied by the object (a).
It is only through these residues of the Real that the psychoanalyst
can encounter both the primitive period of civilization and the primitive
period of infantile sexuality. “Prehistoric man, in the various stages of
his development, is known to us through the inanimate monuments and
implements which he has left behind.. . . (Freud 1913, 1). Likewise, the
fixation is itself an inanimate monument which represents a portion
of a past form of sexuality which has been retained in the present.
Furthermore, the term “pre-historic” man itself introduces a paradox,
for how can it be known what is located before the advent of history.
If our historical knowledge must be based on our ability to Symbolize
the past, what can Symbolize the primitive Real since it is defined by
its resistance to all forms of Symbolization?
This paradox of the analytic attempt to Symbolize that which cannot
be Symbolized is demonstrated by Freud in relation to the existence of

the original period of the primitive Real. . . even primitive people
have not retained the original forms of those institutions nor the condi
tions which gave rise to them; so that we have nothing whatever but
hypotheses to fall back upon as a substitute for the observation which
we are without.” (Freud 1913, 109) Freud argues that these hypotheses
of the primitive Real are a matter of ‘conjecture’ and ‘construction’
and we might add that they include an act of sublimation. For the
subject must produce a residue of the Real which can be Symbolized
and yet resists the Symbolic order itself.
Ambivalence, the Totemic object and the Structure of Neuroses
Freud locates this object of resistance and fixation in relation to the

sacred taboo. “The meaning of the ‘taboo’ as we see it, diverges in
two contrary directions. To us it means, on the one hand, ‘sacred’,
‘consecrated’, and on the other ‘uncanny’, ‘dangerous’, ‘forbidden’,
‘unclean’. . . . Thus, ‘taboo’ has about it the sense of something unap
proachable, and it is principally expressed in prohibitions and restric
tions.” (Freud 1913, 18) The taboo represents the excluded object of
Symbolic law which is at the same time the foundation of the law. An
object cannot be outlawed if its presence was not affirmed beforehand.
This object of transgression is equated with a mysterious power.
“The source of the taboo is attributed to a peculiar magical power
which is inherent in persons and spirits and can be conveyed by them
through the medium of inanimate objects.” (Freud 1913, 20) These
inanimate objects are called referents because they represent the pres
ence of a Real natural force or ‘mana’, which is taken within the
structure of the Symbolic order and yet exceeds that order. “ ‘Persons
or things charged which are regarded as taboo may be compared to
objects charged with electricity; they are the seat of a tremendous
power which is transmissible by contact, and may be liberated with
destructive effect if the organisms which provoke its discharge are too
weak to resist i t . . . .’ ” (Freud 1913, 20) This mana represents a natural
threat to the subject, which in Kleinian terms, can be equated with the
‘bad object’ and in Lacanian terms, the object (a).
In the last chapter, the function of the object (a) to the narcissistic
relation was opposed with the image (a') of the body of the other. This
image represents not only an ideal form of unity and totality, but
also the subject’s control over its own perceptions and sensations.
Furthermore, consciousness is always the consciousness of the ego and

attempts to appropriate the world and render it proper. “Proper,” in
this case, refers to the double meaning of the word which, as Derrida
has shown, can indicate both a state of cleanliness and that which
belongs to me. In the very word, ap-propr-iation, this insistence of the
self is found and it internalizes the world by possessing it as an ideal
form.
With the obsessional neurotic, this dominance of the subject’s at
tempt to constitute the world on the level of this imaginary category
of the proper is seen and it is opposed to the improperness of the
tabooed object. “Obsessional prohibitions involve just as extensive
renunciations and restrictions in the lives of those who are subject to
them as taboo prohibitions; but some of them can be lifted if certain
actions are performed. Thereafter, these actions must be performed:
they become compulsive or obsessive acts, and there can be no doubt
that they are in the nature of expiation, penance, defensive measures
and purification. The commonest of these obsessive acts is washing in
water. . . . (Freud 1913, 28) The structure of the obsessional neurosis
is divided into two areas: on a manifest level, there are the compulsive
acts that attempt to wash away the subject’s sins, and on the more
latent level, there is the attraction towards the taboo object (a).
The contradiction between these two levels accounts for the ambiva
lence of the neurotic subjects that Freud describes in his analysis of a
case of ‘touching phobia’. “Quite at the beginning, in very early child
hood, the patient shows a strong desire to touch. . . . This desire is
promptly met by an external prohibition against carrying out that
particular kind of touching. This prohibition is accepted, since it finds
support from powerful internal forces, and proves stronger than the
instinct which is seeking to express itself in the touching. In conse
quence, however, of the child’s primitive psychical constitution, the
prohibition does not succeed in abolishing the instinct. Its only result
is to repress the instinct (the desire to touch) and banish it into the
unconscious. Both the prohibition and the instinct persist: the instinct
because it only has been repressed and not abolished, and the prohibi
tion because if it ceased, the instinct would force its way through
into consciousness and into actual operation (Freud 1913, 29) This
structure of the obsessional neurosis follows Freud’s three-part theory
of the formation of a neurotic symptom and the development of the
three stages of sexuality: 1) In the primitive period of the Real (infantile
sexuality), the subject expresses the pure desire to touch. 2) In a second
period of latency, this initial fixation is repressed by the internal support
of an externa] prohibition, resulting in 3) the return of the repressed

of the unconscious desire to touch.
For Freud, the end-point of this formation is the production of an
object of ambivalence. “The principal characteristic of the psychologi
cal constellation which becomes fixed in this way is what might be
described as the subject’s ambivalent attitude towards a single object,
or rather towards one act in connection with that object. He is con
stantly wishing to perform this act (touching), and looks on it as his
supreme enjoyment, but he must not perform it and detests it as well.
. . . The prohibition is noisily conscious, while the persistent desire to
touch is unconscious and the subject knows nothing of it.” (Freud
1913, 2 9 —30) The object of ambivalence is placed between two con
flicting forces: on the one hand, there is the conscious demand to avoid
the object or to wash it away, on the other hand, there is the desire to
touch it. When these two opposing tendencies are combined, the result
is the generation of a symptom of ambivalence.
This process can perhaps best be illustrated by turning to Freud’s
case of the Ratman, where the fundamental structure of this obsessional
neurosis is located in the statement, “ 6If 1 have this wish to see a
woman naked, my father will have to die’ ” (Freud, 1909, 24) The
subject’s instinctual desire is combined with the prohibition of the
Other and results in the inability of the subject to act on his desires
because of his fear of the Other.
Freud, in fact, defines neuroses by this conflicting relation between
the unconscious sexual desire and the conscious acceptance of a prohi
bition. “We find therefore: an erotic instinct and a revolt against it; a
wish which has not yet become compulsive and, struggling against it,
a fear which is already compulsive; a painful affect and an impulsion
towards the performance of defensive acts. The inventory of the neuro
sis has reached its full muster.” (Freud 1 9 0 9 ,2 4 ). This relation between
an original sexual desire and a secondary defensive activity forces
the conclusion that the neurotic is dominated by the structure of the
Imaginary and it is defined by the dual relation between the object of
the unconscious desire (a) and the conscious and narcissistic image of
the other (a').
In the case of the Ratman, Freud hypothesizes that the original
unconscious desire of the subject was a hostile one towards his father.
“We may regard the repression of his infantile hatred of his father as
the event which brought his whole subsequent career under the domin
ion of the neurosis.” (Freud 1909, 92) This primary aggressive attitude
towards the father was repressed in turn by an overly loving attitude.
. . he was quite certain that his father’s death could never have
been an object of his desire but only of his fear. . . . According to
psychoanalytic theory, I told him, every fear corresponded to a former
wish which was now repressed; we were therefore obliged to believe
the exact contrary to what he had asserted. This would fit into another
theoretical requirement, namely, that the unconscious must be the
precise contrary of the conscious.. . . It was precisely such intense love
as his that was the condition of the repressed hatred.” (Freud 1909,
39) Freud opposes the conscious dimensions of love, repression, and
fear, to the unconscious domain of desire and hostility towards the
Other.
This division between the unconscious and the conscious in the
obsessional structure determines the “splitting” of the subject. “. . . I
was in complete agreement with this notion of the splitting of the
personality. He had only to assimilate this new contrast, between a
moral self and an evil one, with the contrast that I had already men
tioned, between the conscious and the unconscious. The moral self was
the conscious, the evil self was the unconscious. . . . The unconscious,
I explained was the infantile; it was that part of the self which had
become separated off from it in infancy. . . .” (Freud 1909, 3 6 -7 ) If
the evil, infantile desires of the subject are ascribed to the unconscious
and the moral self to consciousness, neurosis itself is defined by the
internalized conflict between these two levels of Being.
Furthermore, the neurotic symptom represents a compromise solu
tion between the two extremes of amoral sexuality and the morality
of the self. What serves to differentiate the hysterical symptom from
the obsessional symptom is that the hysterical symptom or resolution
occurs most often on the surface of the body, while the obsessional
symptom is most often an internal thought. For example, in the case
of Dora’s nervous cough or her inability to speak, her symptom is a
physical conversion that represents a compromise between a sexual
desire and the defensive reaction against that desire. In this sense, the
symptom is at the same time a production of sexual excitation, and a
reaction to excitation. To illustrate this, Freud once gave the example
of a woman who takes off her clothes with one hand and puts them
on with the other. This is simultaneously the expression of a sexual
impulse and its refusal.
In the case of an obsessional symptom, the subject suffers from
thoughts which also combine a sexual excitation with a counterforce
against the unconscious desire. Thus, when the Ratman recounts a
story of corporal punishment, Freud points out that the subject experi
ences a strange mixture of pleasure and pain. “At all the more impor
tant moments while he was telling his story his face took on a very
strange, composite expression. I could only interpret it as one of horror
at pleasure of his own of which he himself was unaware.” (Freud 1909,
27) The horror that the Ratman felt was later interpreted as his desire
for his father to be the victim of this punishment, and in this sense, his
symptomatic mixture of pleasure and pain must be related to his
Oedipus complex and his desire to rid himself of his restrictive father.
This connection between the neurotic symptom and the Oedipus
complex is delineated best, perhaps, in Freud’s chapter on “Identifica
tion” in his text Group Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego.
“Supposing that a little girl . . . develops the same painful symptom as
her mother— for example the same tormenting cough. This may come
about in various ways. The identification may come from the Oedipus
complex; in that case it signifies a hostile desire on the girl’s part to
take her mother’s place, and the symptom expresses her object-love
towards her father, and brings about a realization, under the influence
of a sense of guilt, of her desire to take her mother’s place.” (Freud
1921, 38) The symptom is located between a Real hostile impulse to
replace the mother and the Symbolic object-choice of the father.
Through a sense of guilt, the subject then realizes a compromise solu
tion that embraces both of these opposing forces and allows the subject
to internalize them on the level of an imaginary fantasy. “ ‘You wanted
to be your mother, and now you are— anyhow so far as your suffering
is concerned’. This is the complete mechanism of the structure of the
hysterical symptom.” (Freud 1921, 38) Here the subject replaces her
object-choice (the father) with an identification with the mother.
Lacan has attempted to articulate this structure with his theory of
the discourse of the hysteric which he writes in the following way:
4 ---------------- - - - ► Sl_
a // S2
This formula can be read as the formation of the symptom itself,

articulated as the movement from an initial fixation of the object (a),
which is then repressed into the unconscious (#) and which results in
the symptomatic (SI) return of the repressed that is cutoff from the
subject’s knowledge (S2). In the case mentioned above, the object (a)
is related to the subject’s infantile sexual desires which are repressed
(#) and replaced by her identification (SI) with her mother.
Lacan calls this symptom a unary trait (SI) because Freud indicates
that it represents a single characteristic that is taken from the Other.
“ It must also strike us that in both cases the identification is a partial
and extremely limited one and only borrows a single trait from the
person who is its object.” (Freud 1921, 39) Since the object of the
subject’s identification is only marked by a single trait or sign, there is
a separation between this primary or master signifier (SI) and the
Other signifier of the signifying chain (S2). Recalling that this Other
signifier also represents the desire of the Other and the demand for
castration, it can be concluded that the symptom represents a repres
sion of the Other’s desires and demands.
However, the structure of hysteria and the structure of the obses
sional neurosis must be distinguished from each other. The obsessional
structure is a virtual inversion of the discourse of the hysteric:
Hysteric_______ _______________________ ______ Obsessional
------ s i S2 - - ~ " “_a_

a // S2 SI // $
In hysteria, the division of the subject (i) and the production of the
symptom (SI) is manifest, whereas the obsessional makes a constant
attempt to hide the vulnerable manifestation of the subject’s uncon
scious (#). Thus, the obsessional subject attempts to hide its symptoms
by complying with the demand of the Other (S2) insofar as the Other’s
desire does not put its narcissism and feeling of self-security at risk.
Furthermore, the demand of the obsessional is always directed towards
an object (a) that is impossible to attain. For what the obsessional seeks
is an unconditional form of love where it receives everything that it is
lacking from the Other.
This object in itself represents a certain logical impossibility that
must be continually displaced by the subject. “Obsessional prohibitions
are extremely liable to displacement. They extend from one object to
another along whatever paths the context may provide, and this new
object then becomes, to the use the apt expression of one of my woman
patients, ‘impossible’. . . .” (Freud 1913, 27) In obsessional neurosis,
this impossible object is placed in the locus of the Other, while the
hysteric becomes this object itself.
Lacan argues that the hysteric attempts to avoid being the captured
object (a) of the Other’s demand (S2) and thus tries to leave itself and
its lover unsatisfied. With the obsessional, the problem is otherwise,
for the subject’s constant compliance with the demand of the Other,
as in the case of the workaholic, serves to hide the inner feelings of
hostility towards both the Other and itself. In fact, in his text “ Instincts
and Their Vicissitudes,” Freud describes the self-torment and self
punishment of the obsessional as a reflexive transformation of an
original feeling of hatred towards the Other. “Self-torment and self
punishment have arisen from the desire to torture, but not masochism.
The active voice is changed, not into the passive one, but into the
reflexive middle voice.” (Freud 1915, 92) It is this reflexive movement
towards the self that connects hysteria to obsession by basing the
clinical category of neurosis on the Imaginary attempt to mediate
between the Real sexuality and hostility of the unconscious subject (i)
and the Symbolic law and demand (D) of the Other.
In this sense, a neurosis itself represents a refusal of the death drive,
which Lacan articulates as the relation between the subject of the
unconscious (i) and the demand (D) of the signifying chain of the
Other. For the hysteric represses the demand (D) of the Other, while
the obsessional represses its subjective division (#). Furthermore, as
will be shown in the third part of the text, perversion is dominated by
the structure of the death drive and it can be inferred that neurosis
represents not only a repression of the drive, but also a refusal of the
activity of perversion. Returning to the second chapter of Totem and
Taboo, entitled “Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence,” Freud’s tieing
of the structure of obsessional neurosis to the formation of the taboo
begins to be seen.
Freud points out that if the most ancient taboos are all based on the
laws which prohibit the killing of the totem animal and the avoidance
of sexual intercourse with members of the same totem clan, then, these
taboos “. . . must be the oldest and most powerful of human desires”
(Freud 1913, 32). In other words, the fundamental desire of every
subject is derived from the Oedipus complex, because the two crimes
of Oedipus are that he made love to his mother and he killed his father.
These two wishes are also the center of Freud’s theory of neuroses, for
the neurotic subject is constantly tempted by the objects and acts which
are outlawed or out of reach. Although the pervert can act on its desires
and transgress the laws of the Other, the neurotic is inhibited in its
activities because of the guilt and the shame that is felt in relation to
its intentions.
Freud argues that these two Oedipal desires serve to structure the
neurotic subject’s ambivalent relation towards the Other. “The occur
rence of excessive solicitude of this kind is very common in neuroses,
and especially in obsessional neuroses. . . . It appears wherever, in

addition to a predominant feeling of affection, there is also a contrary
but unconscious, current of hostility— a state of affairs which repre
sents a typical instance of an ambivalent emotional attitude. The hostil
ity is then shouted down, as it were, by an excessive intensification of
the affection, which is expressed as solicitude and becomes compulsive.
. . .” (Freud 1913, 49) The three stages to the formation of the obses
sional symptom are determined to be: 1) an initial feeling of hostility
towards the Other, 2) a repression of that hostility by an excessive
intensification of affection, and 3) the generation of emotional ambiva
lence towards the Other.
This final attitude of ambivalence is in turn related by Freud to the
feeling of guilt that the neurotic subject experiences. “In the first place,
we have found that a feature in the character of obsessional neurotics
is a scrupulous conscientiousness which is a symptom reacting against
the temptation lurking in their unconscious. If their illness becomes
more acute, they develop a sense of guilt of the most intense degree.”
(Freud 1913, 68) This sense of guilt is equivalent to the symptom of
ambivalence that divides the subject between love and hatred for the
Other.
For Freud, guilt is derived from the subject’s ego-ideal, which stands
above and judges the subject’s ego. Lacan has taught that this ideal
always comes from the Other and thus it can be affirmed that guilt is
derived from the conflict between the demand for love of the narcissistic
ego and the ideal of the social Other.
Freud continues his text by tracing the genesis of this social ideal
and by introducing the concepts of guilt and punishment. “Originally,
that is to say, at the beginning of the illness, the threat of punishment
applied, as in the case of savages, to the patient himself; he was
invariably in fear of his own life; it was not until later that the mortal
fear was displaced on to another and a loved person.” (Freud 1913,
72) Freud posits that the original threat to life is experienced as a threat
to the subject itself, and only later does that threat become displaced
onto the Other. In this movement from the original subject to the social
Other, there is also the movement from an original state of masochism
to a developed state of sadism.
The obsessional symptom is located somewhere between the original
passivity of masochism and the activity of sadism, because the neurotic
is locked into the Imaginary logic of egoistic self-reflexivity. “. . . when
the neurosis appears to be so tenderly altruistic, it is merely compensat
ing for an underlying contrary attitude of brutal egoism. We may
describe as ‘social’ the emotions which are determined by showing

consideration for another person without taking him as a sexual object.
The receding into the background of these social factors may be stressed
as a fundamental characteristic of the neurosis, though one which is
later disguised by over-compensation.” (Freud 19, 72) Once again,
Freud places the neurotic structure between the pure autoerotism of
the unconscious and the pure altruism of the social Other.
The neurotic attempts to escape from both the excessive excitations
of the pure sexual instinct (the Real) and the laws and demands of the
social Other. “The asocial nature of neuroses has its genetic origin
in their most fundamental purpose, which is to take flight from an
unsatisfying reality into a more pleasurable world of fantasy. The Real
world, which is avoided in this way by neurotics, is under the sway of
human society and of the institutions collectively created by it. To turn
away from reality is at the same time to withdraw from the community
of man. (Freud 1913, 74) If the neurotic turns away from the social
Other towards the Imaginary world of pleasure and fantasy and the
psychotic radically rejects the social Other, the question is what is the
perverts relation to this Symbolic Other?
Perversion, Castration, and the Other
For Freud, society itself is defined by the relation between individuals

and the laws that they develop. “The social aspect of totemism is
principally expressed in severely enforced injunctions and a sweeping
restriction. The members of a totem clan are brothers and sisters and
are bound to help and to protect one another. If a member of a clan
is killed by someone outside it, the whole clan of the aggressor is
responsible for the deed and the whole clan of the murdered man is at
one in demanding satisfaction for the blood that has been shed. The
totem bond is stronger than that of the family in our sense.” (Freud
1913, 105) Freud determines the totem clan to be what might be called
a gang. For in both the totem clan and the gang, the division of an ‘in
group’ and an ‘out group’ is found, with each having the same need
for a group name, a group leader, and large body of rules and punish
ments that serves to keep the members together. This analogy can be
extended since both groups practice certain forms of Symbolic sacrifice
and ceremonial rituals of initiation.
Without entering into a psychoanalytic theory of gangs, it can be
asserted that these groups, which tend to be mostly masculine, are
centered on the relation between each subject and a father-figure. For

it is the role of identification with the law and the name of the Other
that binds the group together. In this sense, each member of the group
identifies with the ideal of the Other and this allows the group to create
its own laws and norms.
Furthermore, a relation between these social groups and the clinic
of perversion can be started to be seen. For what seems to be a constant
in most sadomasochistic scenarios is the attempt to constitute a series
of laws and rituals that are placed outside of the wider social context.
This structure requires that one subject play the part of the punishing
superego or father-figure, while the other subject must obey the laws
and commands that are shouted out. In gangs, this same need of a
hierarchy is found and it separates the unquestionable leaders from the
powerless followers.
Another similarity between the structure of perversion and the struc
ture of a gang or clan is that there is a severe reduction of the neurotic
symptoms of inhibition and guilt. This in turn allows the subjects to
act freely without worrying about the consequences of their activities.
This lack of fear is due to the annihilation of the subject’s individual
personality and narcissism by the transcending values of the group.
Freud underlines this point when he discusses ritualistic sacrifices. “The
sacrificial feast was an occasion on which the individuals rose joyously
above their own interests and stressed the mutual dependence existing
between one another and god.” (Freud 1913, 134) The sacrifice is a
sacrifice of the subject’s narcissistic Being-for-itself for the Being-for-
Others.
This transcendence of the social Other over the narcissistic ego was
previously tied to the complex of castration and the law of the father.
For it is the father’s role to resolve the subject’s Oedipus complex by
intervening in the narcissistic relation between the subject and the
mother. This intervention is in turn tied to a threat of bodily harm that
represents, in itself, the potential destruction of the narcissistic body-
image. In certain cases of perversion, a ceremonial repetition of this
process of castration is found.
Freud’s discussion of a case of what he calls a ‘positive totemism’
will be used to illustrate this structure. “ It is true that in the case of
little Arpad (the subject of Ferenczi’s report) his totemic interests did
not arise in direct relation with his Oedipus complex but on the basis
of its narcissistic precondition, the fear of castration.” (Freud 1913,
130) What interests Freud in this case is that the subject resolves his
Oedipus complex by identifying with the law of his father. This is
achieved after Arpad is bitten on the penis by a fowl. The neurotic

subject would perhaps respond to this traumatic event by avoiding the
animal or by forming a phobia, like the case of little Hans. However,
Arpad responds by first imitating the fowl and then by reversing the
situation and attacking the feared animal. “His favorite game was
playing slaughtering fowls. ‘The slaughtering of poultry was a regular
festival for him. He would dance around the animals’ bodies for hours
at a time in a state of intense excitement.” (Freud 1913, 130) This
ritual act of sacrifice is interpreted by Freud to be a repetition of the
act of castration. “He was very generous in threatening other people
with castration, just as he himself had been threatened for his masturba-
tory activities.” (Freud 19 , 131) In this sense, Arpad resolves his
Oedipus complex by identifying with the father who enforces the law
of castration. “From time to time he translated his wishes from the
totemic language into that of everyday life. ‘My father’s the cock,’ he
said on one occasion, and another time: ‘now I’m small, now I’m a
chicken. When I get bigger still I’ll be a cock.” (Freud 19 , 130- 131)
Thus, for Arpad, to be the cock is to be the father who castrates all of
the other small chickens.
This act of castration represents the introduction of the subject into
the social order and performs the same task as the totemic meal or
sacrifice. “The totem meal, which is perhaps mankind’s earliest festival,
would thus be a repetition and a commemoration of the memorable
and criminal deed, which was the beginning of so many things— of
social organization, of moral restrictions and of religion.” (Freud 1913,
142) Freud bases the foundations of civilization on the commemoration
of the murder of the primal father. In the castration complex, there is
this same aspect of the ceremonial repetition of primal murder.
In the introduction to this text, it was mentioned that this myth of the
murder of the primal father and the birth of civilization is articulated by
Freud in three logical times. In the beginning of the primitive Real,
Freud locates the primal father who has absolute power and has no
restrictions to his sexuality. “All that we find there is a violent and
jealous father who keeps all the females for himself and drives away
his sons.” (Freud 1913, 141) This primal father represents, therefore,
the asocial and violent nature of pure sexual excitation.
In a second period, a group of brothers reacts to this situation and
they attack their father. “One day the brothers who had been driven
out came together, killed and devoured their father and so made an
end of the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to and
succeeded in doing what would have been impossible for them individ
ually.” (Freud 1913, 141) This second stage can be called the Imaginary
time of unity and repression for it serves to articulate the separation
of the subject from the primitive state of the Real. Of course in neuroses,
the father is usually not killed, but only repressed into the subject’s
unconscious.
In the final stage of this myth, the brothers begin to feel guilty
for their act and thus they establish the law against incest and they
commemorate their dead father in the form of a Symbolic totem. “They
revoked their deed by forbidding the killing of the totem, the substitute
for the father; and they renounced its fruits by resigning their claim to
the woman who had now been set free.” (Freud 1913, 143) The subjects
thus resolve their Oedipus complexes through the generation of a series
of Symbolic laws and identifications that will serve to regulate the
desire of every subject.
This generation of the social system of law, which moves from the
Real fixation to the Imaginary repression to the Symbolic totem, also
serves to structure the three stages of history (animism, religion, and
science) that Freud develops in this text. “The punishment for the
violation of a taboo was no doubt originally left to an internal, auto
matic agency: the violated taboo itself took vengeance. When, at a
later stage, ideas of gods and spirits arose, with whom taboo became
associated, the penalty was expected to follow automatically from the
divine power. In other cases, probably as the result of a further evolu
tion of the concept, society itself took over the punishment of offenders,
whose conduct had brought their fellows into danger. Thus the earliest
penal systems may be traced back to taboo.” (Freud 1913, 20) Here,
the role of the punishing Other moves from the Real subject to an
Imaginary divine power that is finally superseded by the generation of
a Symbolic system of law.
This same movement will account for the three different stages of
history.5 “At the animistic stage men ascribe omnipotence to them
selves. At the religious stage they transfer it to the gods but do not
seriously abandon it themselves, for they reserve the power of influenc
ing the gods in a variety of ways according to their wishes. The scientific
view of the universe no longer affords any room for human omnipo
tence; men have acknowledged their smallness and submitted resign
edly to death and to the other necessities of nature.” (Freud 19, 88)
Once again Freud moves from the Real isolated Subject (S), to the
Imaginary ideal other (a'), and finally to the Symbolic Other (A).
In the initial time of the primitive Real (animism), the subject is
considered to be omnipotent because there are no restrictions to its
power or sexuality. In the second period of the Imaginary order of

religion, the subject attempts to fulfill its desires through the demands
that it makes to an Imagined Other. In the third period of science and
Symbolic law, the subject gives up its belief in the omnipotence of his
self and accepts the law and desire of the Other. This final period also
entails a resignation to death that can be read as a resignation to the
death drive that is demanded by the Symbolic Other.
Freud continues his text by connecting these three periods of history
to three stages of sexuality. “If we may regard the existence among
primitive races of the omnipotence of thoughts as evidence in favor of
narcissism, we are encouraged to attempt a comparison between the
phases in the development of men’s view of the universe and the stages
of an individual’s libidinal development. The animistic stage would
correspond to narcissism both chronologically and in its content; the
religious phase would correspond to the stage of the object-choice of
which the characteristic is the child’s attachment to his parents; while
the scientific phase would have an exact counterpart in the stage in
which the individual has reached maturity, has renounced the pleasure
principle, adjusted himself to reality and turned to the external world
for the object of his desires.” (Freud 19, 90) This attempt by Freud to
read the structure of sexuality into the structure of human history is
partially flawed because he fails to distinguish clearly between auto
erotism, narcissism, and the object-choice.
On the previous page, he writes that the primary period of sexuality
is autoerotism and that the primary period of history is animism. Both
of these stages are defined by the absence of a relation to an Other or
to an object. “Manifestations of the sexual instinct can be observed
from the very first, but to begin with they are not yet directed towards
any external object. The separate instinctual components of sexuality
work independently of one another and obtain pleasure and find satis
faction in the subject’s own body. This stage is known as that of auto
erotism and it is succeeded by one in which an object is chosen.” (Freud
1913, 88) Freud points out that this lack of the object in autoerotism
is soon replaced by the first object in narcissism. “At this intermediate
stage, the importance of which is being made more and more evident
by research, the hitherto isolated sexual instincts have already come
together into a single whole and have also found an object. But this
object is not an external one, extraneous to the subject, but it is his
own ego, which has been constituted at about the same time. . . . We
have given it the name of ‘narcissism’.” (Freud 1913, 88) Lacan’s
theory of the mirror stage will correct this statement of Freud’s by
showing that the ego itself is an external object that derives its unity
from the image of the other. In this way narcissism can be tied to the
Oedipal relation with the mother, as much as she represents the ideal
object of love and unity. The object-choice, then, is connected to the
subject’s movement away from the narcissistic and Oedipal principle
of Imaginary pleasure, to what Freud has named here the scientific
principle of reality.
These stages of sexuality now can be related to the stages of history
and the three clinical structures to which they respond:
Real Imaginary Symbolic

Animism Religion Science
Autoerotism Narcissism O bject-choice
Psychosis Neurosis Perversion
In the first chapters of this book, Freud’s theory of the primitive Real
was tied to the unconscious subject of infantile sexuality, which is
defined by its autoerotic and autistic separation from the Symbolic
Other.
This rejection or foreclosure of the Other is connected to the psy
chotic process of hallucination, which Freud later names ‘projection’.
“The most striking characteristic of symptom-formation in paranoia
is the process which deserves the name projection. An internal percep
tion is suppressed, and, instead, its content, after undergoing a certain
degree of distortion, enters consciousness in the form of an external
perception.” (Freud 1911, 169) In Totem and Taboo Freud uses this
same process of projection to define the primitive functioning of the
mental apparatus. “The projection outward of internal perceptions is
a primitive mechanism, to which our sense perceptions are subject, and
which therefore normally plays a very large part in determining the
form taken by our external world. Under conditions whose nature has
not yet been sufficiently established, internal perceptions of emotional
and intellectual processes can be projected outward in the same way
as sense perceptions.” (Freud 1913, 64) Furthermore, it is this process
of projections that serves to determine the primitive historical period
of animism. “The projection of their own evil impulses into demons is
only one portion of a system which constituted the Weltschauung of
primitive people, and which we shall come to know as ‘animism’. . . . ”
(Freud 1913, 6 4 -6 5 ) In animism and psychosis, what the subject rejects
in the Symbolic returns in the Real in the form of an external perception
or hallucination.
One of the central Symbolic elements that is foreclosed in the primi

tive state of animism is the concept of death. “What the primitive man
regarded as the natural thing was the indefinite prolongation of life—
immortality. The idea of death was only accepted late and with hesi
tancy. Even for us it is lacking in content and has no clear connotation.”
(Freud 1913, 76) Perhaps it is only with language that the subject
became able to have a concept of death. For our own death cannot be
known so our experience of death is always through the death of the
Other or as Heidegger reminds us, the anticipation of our own death.
For Lacan, this representation of death within the unconscious of
the subject is determined by the death drive and the Symbolic order.
Furthermore, for Freud the Symbolic father is always a dead father. It
is by being dead that the father can transcend his own existence and
become the signifier of law and the Other.
In animism, since the death of the Other is rejected, the subject
experiences this Other as a spirit or demon that is perceived in the
Real. “The fact that demons are always regarded as the spirits of those
who have died recently shows better than anything the influence of
mourning on the origin of the belief in demons.” (Freud 1913, 65) This
dead Other that returns in the form of a demon is also a hostile other
that seeks revenge. “. . . a dearly loved relative at the moment of his
death changes into a demon, from whom his survivors can expect
nothing but hostility and against whose evil desires they must protect
themselves.” (Freud 1913, 58) The structure of this primitive formation
is the same as a psychotic delusion of persecution, where the internal
Symbolic Other or superego is foreclosed by the subject and then
projected out as an external perception. Instead of the subject admitting
that he has hated the Other, it projects its hostility into the external
world and perceives that the Other hates it.
The question of what accounts for this primal hatred of the Other
remains to be answered. An answer to this question can be initiated
by affirming the binary opposition between the Real subject of sexuality
and the Symbolic Other of language and law. In this sense, the hatred
towards the Other is the result of the structural dichotomy between
the existence of the subject and the structure of the Symbolic order
itself.
What, in part, determines the difference between psychosis, neuro
ses, and perversion are the different ways that the subject responds to
this fundamental conflict between the Real subject and the Symbolic
Other. Lacan and Freud show that the psychotic forecloses the Other,
the neurotic represses the Other, and the pervert negates or denies the
Other.
This process of foreclosure or rejection of the Other, which already

has been attached to the activity of projection and hallucination, is
taken by Lacan from Freud’s case of the Wolfman. “He rejected castra
tion, and held to the theory of intercourse by the anus. When I speak
of his having rejected it, the first meaning of the phrase is that he would
have nothing to do with it, in the sense of having repressed it. This
really involved no judgement upon the question of its existence, but it
was just as though it did not exist.” (Freud 1918, 275) We can Symbol
ize this rejection of castration by the quantifier Exlx, for not only is
the function of castration foreclosed (Ix), but there is also a negation
of the judgement of existence (Ex).
Freud locates this same process of rejection in the animistic process
of projection. “The hostility, of which the survivors know nothing and
moreover wish to know nothing, is ejected from the internal perception
into the external world, and thus detached from them and pushed onto
someone else. It is no longer true that they are rejoicing to be rid of
the dead man, on the contrary they are mourning for hi m. . . . ” (Freud
1913, 6 2 -3 )
Freud argues that a primitive person forecloses its hatred for the
Other in the same way that the psychotic refuses to accept the hostility
that it feels. As was pointed out in the discussion of the Schreber case,
Freud argues that in the second logical moment of psychosis, the idea
“I hate him” is rejected and projected out as the internal perception
“ He hates me.”
This hostility towards the Other, that is rejected in the Symbolic and
which returns on the level of a Real perception, is related to the role
of the father and the Symbolic functions of death and castration. This
is evident in both the cases of Schreber and the Wolfman, where the
persecuting Other is God the father. “The cruel God with whom
he was then struggling— who made men sinful, only to punish them
afterwards, who sacrificed his own son and the sons of men— this
character threw back his character onto the patient’s father. . . . In
spite of everything it was his father from whom in the end he came
to fear castration. In this respect heredity triumphed over accidental
experience; in man’s prehistory it was unquestionably the father who
practiced castration as a punishment and who later softened it down
into circumcision.” (Freud 1918, 277) Freud’s use of the term “hered
ity” can be replaced with Lacan’s term “structure,” in order to show
how the Symbolic function of the father transcends the Real experi
ences of the subject. For it is not important that the subject name the
agent of castration, father or God, but what does matter is the subject’s
reaction to this intervention of the Symbolic Other.
The psychotic and the primitive man react to this Other through the
process of foreclosure and projection; the reaction of the neurotic is
quite different. Neurosis already has been tied to the Imaginary order
of narcissism, ambivalence, and repression, now these phenomena can
be related to the second historical period of religion.
Throughout his work, Freud tied the clinical category of obsessional
neuroses to the discourse of religion. One of the central, key points in
these two structures is that the Symbolic Other, or father, is put in the
position of the ideal of the ego. This idealization of the Other serves
to hide the subject’s fundamental hatred of the Other and causes a
division of the subject between his conscious demand to please his
ideal, and his unconscious hostility towards the Other. In religion, this
demand towards the Other for love and understanding is fulfilled by
the function of prayer and the creation of a fixed body of beliefs and
meanings.
In fact, Lacan has argued that religion itself is responsible for the
advent of meaning, which determines the signification of the Other.
“The stability of religion stems from the fact that meaning is always
religious.” (Lacan 1980, 129) What religion introduces into the Real
is a systematic explanation and organization of the world that is pro
duced on the ideal level of meaning and consciousness.
As previously pointed out, for Freud, consciousness itself represents
a demand for the Imaginary aspect of understanding and unity.6 “There
is an intellectual function in us which demands unity, connection and
intelligibility from any material, whether of perception or of thought,
that comes within its grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances,
it is unable to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to
fabricate a false one.” (Freud 1913, 95) As was seen in the reading of
Freud’s text on narcissism, this generation of meaning and understand
ing is defined as the subject’s attempt to recover from an initial state
of the world, where there is no unity or understanding. It is through
the perception of the unity of the ego, which is itself defined by the
unified image of the Other, that the subject first begins to organize his
world.
For Freud, this Imaginary level of understanding and narcissism
defines the category of neurosis itself. “. . . analytic investigation re
veals the same thing in other neuroses as well. In all of them what
determines the formation of symptoms is the reality not of experience
but of thought. Neurotics live in a world apart, where, as 1 have said
elsewhere, only ‘neurotic currency’ is legal tender; that is to say, they
are only affected by what is thought with intensity and pictured with
emotion, whereas agreement with external reality is a matter of no

importance. What hysterics repeat in their attacks and fix by means of
their symptoms are experiences which have occurred in that form only
in their imagination.. . .” (Freud 1913, 86) It is the realm of Imaginary
fantasy and thought that serves to determine the cause of neurosis,
while in psychosis, the cause is located on the level of a Real perception.
However, both of these disorders stem from a primal rejection or
repression of the Symbolic Other.
It is only in the clinical category of perversion that we find the subject
in the position of affirming the law of the Other. It was pointed out
already that in certain perverse structures, the subject repeats a scene
of castration, where it attempts to take on the role of the Father for
the subject. In the next chapter it will be shown how the pervert’s
relation to the law of the Other is determined by the process of nega
tion, which Freud defines as a simultaneous affirmation and denial of
a Symbolic attribute. Thus, in the example of the subject who states
that is was not his mother in the dream, Freud supposes that it was
the mother and that the subject is divided between the unconscious
affirmation of truth and his conscious lie.
Lacan affirms that this division of the subject can be explained by
the difference between the level of enunciation and the level of the
statement7. The enunciation represents the truth of the statement,
which is hidden by the subject’s attempt to lie. In his article, “Nega
tion,” Freud affirms that this process allows the subject to move beyond
the neurotic defense of repression. “Negation is a way of taking into
account of what is repressed; indeed, it is actually a removal of this
repression, though not, of course, an acceptance of what is repressed.”
(Freud 1925, 214) Negation, like the third stage of sexuality and
symptom formation, represents a return of the repressed within the
Symbolic order of language. “The result is a kind of intellectual accep
tance of what is repressed, though in all essentials the repression per
sists.” (Freud 1925, 214) The subject intellectually accepts his repres
sion because he pronounces the truth of his desire through an
intellectual statement. However, Freud reminds us that the true object
of the subject’s desire remains and persists in the unconscious.
This reminder of the repressed is connected to the function of the
object (a), which is the excluded-included center of the subject’s drive
and discourse. Lacan has argued that the object in the drive of sadomas
ochism is the voice of the Other, which he also ties to the function of
the superego. Perversion, in turn, can be based on this process of both
affirming and denying the voice of the Other. The masochistic subject
forces the Other to command him while the sadist becomes the com
mander itself. In both situations, there is an attempt to enforce the
subject’s superego on the Symbolic level. In perversion, then, there is
an externalization of the superego; however, not as in the case of
psychosis, where the superego is hallucinated, but rather in the activity
of a relation between two subjects.
It is this return of the Symbolic father, or superego, which defines,
in part, the development of a society. Freud elaborates this connection
in the last chapter of Totem and Taboo, “The Return of Totemism in
Childhood,” where he explains the third period of the myth of the
primal horde. “With the introduction of father-deities a fatherless
society gradually changes into one organized on a patriarchal basis.
The family was a restoration of the former primal horde and it gave
back to fathers a large portion of their former rights.” (Freud 1913,
149) This return of the father also represented an increase in the need
for sacrifice by the subjects of society. “It must be confessed that the
revenge taken by the deposed and restored father was a harsh one: the
dominance of authority was at its climax, the subjugated sons made
use of the new situation in order to unburden themselves still further
of their sins and guilt. They were no longer in any way responsible for
the sacrifice as it now was. It was God himself who demanded it and
regulated it. . . . Here we have the most extreme denial of the great
crime which was the beginning of society and the sense of guilt.” (Freud
1913, 150) The punishment by God is a punishment by the Symbolic
Other who seeks to regulate and control all of the subject’s desires and
activities.
Here is the pure functioning of the death drive as it represents the
transcendence of the Symbolic order over the needs and intentions of
the subject. Likewise, as stated by Lacan, in the structure of perversion
there is always an element of sacrifice, which can be related to the
subject’s position of being a pure instrument of an evil God. In this
sense, the sadist is only a tool for the Symbolic order that demands the
castration and subjugation of the subject.
The pervert, therefore, both affirms and denies its hostility towards
the Other by becoming the instrument of the Other’s law and desire.
The next chapter will more fully articulate this structure of perver
sion as it relates to Freud’s theory of the death drive. However, before
leaving Freud’s Totem and Taboo, the final paragraph in the text
should be examined in order to point out a final distinction between
the primitive Real of psychosis and the Imaginary realm of neuroses.
“. . . neurotics are above all inhibited in their actions: with them the
thought is a complete substitute for the deed. Primitive men, on the

other hand, are uninhibited: thought passes directly into action. With
them it is rather the deed that is a substitute for thought.” (Freud 1913,
161) Thus, on the primary level of the Real, there is the act, while a
secondary time is inhibited by the Imaginary realm of thought. It can
only be supposed that in a third logical time there is a return of the
repressed act beyond the inhibitions and prohibitions of the Imaginary,
and that this act is formulated on the level of the Symbolic order of
law and language.
Thus far, it has been established that 1) the clinical category of
psychosis is defined by the rejection of the Symbolic Other and the
logic of the primitive Real (foreclosure, projection, autoerotism, ani
mism); 2) that in neuroses, the Other is repressed through the structure
of the Imaginary (ambivalence, narcissism, religion) and 3) in perver
sion, the Other represents the Symbolic functions of castration, the
death drive, and the superego.
m
The Structure of
the Symbolic
5
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
The third period of Freud’s work is centered on the movement

beyond the Imaginary principle of pleasure towards the Symbolic prin
ciple of reality and the structure of the death drive. In order to articulate
this relation between the Symbolic order and the death drive, Freud’s
text “ Instincts and Their Vicissitudes,” where the structure of the drive
is articulated between four elements (source, aim, impetus, object),
four vicissitudes (reversal, turning around, repression, sublimation)
and three fundamental oppositions (subject/object, pleasure/pain, ac
tive/passive) must be studied. All of these relations will be applied to
the logical structure that developed in the previous chapters.
The Logic of the Drive
To begin with, there must be a consensus with Lacan that Freud’s

term “T rieb” should be translated as “drive” and not by the term used
in the English translation, “instinct”. This becomes apparent in the
beginning of Freud’s text where he attem pts to separate this concept
from a purely biological definition, “ if now we apply ourselves to
considering mental life from a biological point of view, an ‘instinct’
appears to us as a borderline concept between the mental and the
physical, being both the mental representative of the stimuli emanating
from within the organism and penetrating to the mind, and at the same
time a measure of the demand made upon the energy of the latter in
consequence of its connection with the body.” (Freud 1915, 87) The
drive is far from being a purely natural or physical instinct, but rather
represents a relation between a physical stimulation and a mental
representation.
in the reading of this text, it will be shown how the physical side of
this equation is determined by the Real source of sexual (#) excitation,
and that the mental aspect is determined by the Symbolic demand (D)
107
of the Other. Thus, the drive itself, which Lacan writes as (#vD)1,
articulates the fundamental relation between the Real subject of sexual
ity (#) and the Symbolic demand (D) of the Other.
The source is the first com ponent of the drive that will be examined.
“By the source of an instinct is meant that somatic process in an organ
or part of the body from which there results a stimulus represented in
mental life by an instinct.” (Freud 1916, 88) This source of sexuality
can be equated with the first discovery of Freud, infantile sexuality,
because in itself, it represents the purely sensual level of Real sexual
existence and is w ithout any relation to the Symbolic Other. Freud
indicates this separation from the Symbolic order when he places the
study of the source outside of the field of psychology. “The study of
the sources of instinct is outside the scope of psychology; although its
source in the body is what gives the instinct its distinct and essential
character, yet in mental life we know it merely by its aim s.” (Freud
1915, 88) Therefore, the source of the drive in itself cannot be known,
but it can be inferred from the aim of the drive.
However, the aim itself is in opposition to the original source of
excitation (jouissance). “The aim of an instinct is in every instance
satisfaction, which can only be obtained by abolishing the condition
of stimulation in the source of the instinct.” (Freud 1915, 87) This
structure repeats the structure of symptom-formation and the three
stages of sexual development. It was previously shown that most of
Freud’s theories and structures begin with the affirmation of a primary
form of Real sexuality (fixation and autoerotic infantile sexuality),
which, in a second time, is opposed by some type of Imaginary counter
force (repression and narcissistic latency). In this sense, the aim of the
drive represents a repression of the original source of sexual excitation.
As in the structure of sexuality and symptom formation, it can be
expected that the third com ponent of the drive, the impetus, will
represent a return of the repressed sexual source within the Symbolic
order. “By the impetus of an instinct we understand its m otor element,
the am ount of force or the measure of the demand upon energy which
it represents. The characteristic of impulsion is common to all instincts,
is in fact the very essence ofthem . Every instinct is a form of activity. . . .
(Freud 1915, 87) For Lacan, this demand for energy represents the
transform ation of the original state of Real organic need into the
structure of a Symbolic signifying chain (S2). The demand itself must
be formulated within language and addressed towards the Other. Fur
therm ore, Lacan adds that this transform ation of the Real need into
B eyond the Pleasure Principle / 109
the Symbolic demand always leaves a metonymic residue which he

names desire.
By turning to the fourth and final com ponent of the drive, the object,
some of the roots of Lacan’s theory of the object (a) are found. “The
object of an instinct is that in or through which it can achieve its aim.
It is the most variable thing about an instinct and is not originally
connected with it, but becomes attached to it only in consequence of
being peculiarly fitted to provide satisfaction. (Freud 1915, 87—8) This
object can be symbolized by a letter, because it represents a pure logical
variable that is fitted into the structure of the drive. It is an x, which
marks the place of desire, inasmuch as desire is always a call for
something else. For if the drive is structured by the fundamental conflict
between the autoerotic source of need and the Symbolic structure of
the demand, the drive itself can never be fully satisfied, except by
the Imaginary fantasy of the aim. Lacan continuously puts into an
opposition this Imaginary aim, as it is represented by the narcissistic
image of the other, to the logic of the object (a), which Lacan conceives
as the part of the subject which has no specular other.
In Freud’s definition of the object, this part-object can be connected
to the fixation of a previous form of sexuality. “The object is not
necessarily an extraneous one: it may be part of the subject’s own
body. It may be changed any num ber of times in the course of the
vicissitudes the instinct undergoes during life; a highly im portant part
is played by this capacity for displacement in the instinct.. . . A particu
larly close attachm ent of the instinct to its object is distinguished by
the fixation. . . . (Freud 1915, 88) There are two opposing properties
of the object, it can be displaced, and at the same time, it can be fixated.
Lacan resolves this contradictory nature of the object by defining it
as a pure, logical constant that has no essence in itself, but is produced
by the substitution of the Symbolic demand for the Real need. Further
more, by labeling the object as the cause of desire, Lacan seeks to
separate the fixation of the cause from the displacement of desire. In
this sense, the fixation of the object produces the displacement of
desire. For if the object (a) of fixation is defined as the pure logical
m arker of a part of the subject which has been left behind by the
original state of sexuality, this object itself represents the impossibility
of satisfaction and fuels the movement of the longing aspect of desire.
Ever since Socrates, desire has been defined as a longing for that
which is not possessed and thus desire can never be satisfied.2 Likewise,
when Lacan defines the object (a) as the cause of desire, he attempts
1 1 0 / Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
to show how and why desire can never be fulfilled. As a cause, the
object is alw ays placed before the desire and it is always running behind
the subject. This is the generation of the logical paradox o f the tortoise
and the hare, because the subject can never catch up to the true object
o f his desire.
For both Freud and Lacan, the object o f desire is always a lost object
and can only be refound as absent. This object of fixation is called a
referent because it refers to the initial state o f the primitive Real of
infantile sexuality. The fixation is not Real in itself, but rather an object
that has been left over by the Real within the Symbolic order.
For Lacan, like Sartre, the Real is defined by its full plenitude;
nothing lacks in the Real. However, the object (a) represents a lack
itself and it must be supposed that this element of negativity has been
introduced by the conflictual relation between the Real and Symbolic
orders.
These four components o f the drive, the source, the aim, the impetus
and the object, can be placed in a logical square that has been articu
lated with Lacan ’s discourse of the m aster3 and his schema L:
aim, a', SI S2, A, impetus
source, S, t (a), a, object

In the position of the source the Real subject (i) of infantile sexuality
and the unconscious is placed. This source o f excitation is repressed
by the Imaginary aim of narcissism as it is represented by the image of
the other (a') and the m aster signifier (SI) of the ego-ideal. In the third
position o f the Sym bolic Other (A), the impetus as the signifying chain
(S2) of the demand that represents a return o f the repressed source of
sexuality within the structure of the death drive. The object (a), result
and product o f this movement from the original need of the subject to
the demand of the Other is located in the final position. This object is
in opposition to the narcissistic image of the other (a') that serves to
hide the presence of dissatisfaction and desire.
This structure can also be used to articulate the three fundamental
oppositions of mental life: 1) subject— object, 2) pleasure— pain, 3)
activity— passivity.4 “ The antithesis of . . . subject— object, is, as we
have already said, thrust upon the individual being at an early stage,
by the experience that it can abolish external stimuli by means of
m uscular action but is defenseless against those stimuli that originate in
B eyond the Pleasure Principle /111
instinct. This antithesis remains sovereign above all in our intellectual

activity and provides research with a fundamental situation which
no account of effort can offer.” (Freud 1915, 98) This fundamental
distinction between the subject {&) and the object (a) is located on the
bottom of the structure between the components of the Real source of
sexual existence and the fixated object of the drive. This opposition
cannot be overcome because the source of the drive represents the
autoerotic process of self-satisfaction, while the object represents dis
satisfaction in itself.
The second opposition that Freud introduces is dependent on his
theory of the Imaginary pleasure principle. “The polarity of pleasure—
pain depends upon a feeling series, the significance of which in de
termining our actions (will) is param ount. . . . (Freud 1915, 98) It has
been argued that Freud’s theory of pleasure is based on the twin
concepts of narcissism and intentionality. For w hat motivates the sub
ject is the aim of pleasure as it is represented by images of fulfillment
and unity. Consciousness itself represents the intentionality of this
quest for the image of the other (a') that is related to the ideal of the
ego. “ For this pleasure-ego the outside world is divided into a part that
is pleasurable, which it has incorporated into itself, and a remainder
that is alien to it.” (Freud 1915, 99) This remainder is the object (a)
which represents the other end of the dialectic of narcissism and the
pleasure principle.
The third polarity that Freud describes is passivity— activity. “The
antithesis of active— passive coalesces later with that of masculine—
feminine, which, until this has taken place, has no psychological sig
nificance.” (Freud 1915, 99) This third level of the drive is structured
by the Symbolic order of sexual difference which Freud had previously
argued as not come into being until puberty.5
Furthermore, in his definition of the impetus of the drive, Freud
stated that the drive in itself is always active and therefore always
masculine. This element of activity is located in the position of the
Symbolic Other which represents the intervention of the father in the
complex of castration. It is this intervention which determines that
the needs of the subject will be transcended by the demand of the
Other.
The Subject (S) of the initial opposition is placed in the position of
the Real, the pleasure (a') of the secondary polarity in the Imaginary,
and the activity (A) of the third in the Symbolic. If these elements are
placed on the logical square, it is evident that each element is defined
by its opposition to the object (a):
pleasure, aim, a', SI S2, A, impetus, activity
subject, source, S, s (a), a, object, pain, passivity

In w hat Freud calls the ‘real’ p olarity, it is found th at the full positivity
o f the su b ject (S) o f sexual excitation (jouissance) is o p p o se d by the
exclu ded o b ject (a) (plus-de-jouir) o f the drive. In the econom ic p o la r
ity, there is an o p p ositio n between the p leasu re o f the n arcissistic im age
o f the other (a') and the pain caused by the ob ject (a), which can n ot
be im agin ed o r m astered. T he third p olarity is structured by the relation
betw een the pure activity o f the drive and the passivity o f the ob ject
(a).
T he Structure o f Perversion and Fantasy
T he final op p o sitio n , the “ b io lo g ic a l” one betw een the active im pulse

o f the O ther (A) and the p assive existence o f the ob ject (a), serves to
structure the clinic o f perversion and the presence o f the death drive.
Freud uses this polarity o f passivity an d activity to structure the relation
betw een m asoch ism and sad ism within three logical m om ents, “ (a)
Sad ism con sists in the exercise o f violence o r pow er upon som e other
person o r object, (b) T h is object is ab an d o n ed and replaced by the
su b jec t’s self. . . . (c) A gain an oth er person is sought as object.
. . . ’’ (Freud 1915, 92) It is interesting to note that once again in this
text, Freud returns to a structure th at is determ ined by a three-stage
logic. In the prim ary logical tim e, there is the m anipu lation o f an ob ject
(a) by the Subject (S) in the Real. In the secon d logical stage, the ob ject
(a) is replaced by the su b ject’s ow n self, w hile in the third stag e the
O ther (A) is taken as an object (a) for the Subject (S):
Subject S a' image of self
object a A Other
T he m ovem ent o f these three logical m om ents o f perversion can be

traced as the m ovem ent from the Real p assive Subject (S) o f sexuality
to the activity o f the Sym bolic dem and o f the O ther (A) which p asses
through the Imaginary relation with the narcissistic image of the self
(a').
In the first moment of this construction, it must assumed that the
subject is dom inated by the Real opposition between the source and
the object of the drive. The subject attem pts to rid himself of the Other
in order to m aintain its existence on the level of pure excitation. This
primary repression of the Other is labeled a “foreclosure” and is
attached to the clinic of psychosis.
In the second time of this construction, the ego comes into play in
relation to the turning around of the libido upon the self as it is
represented by the narcissistic image of the other. Freud attaches this
stage of the drive to the obsessional symptoms of self-doubt and self
torm ent, both of which represent a middle state between activity and
passivity. “The active voice is changed, not into the passive, but into
the reflexive voice.” (Freud 1915, 92) This reflexive voice is structured
by the narcissistic relation between the subject and the reflected image
that it has of itself.
The neurotic and narcissistic stage of the drive is transcended by the
reversal of a passive position of the original subject to an active posi
tion, affirming the demand of the Other. In this third vicissitude of
the drive (reversal), Freud indicates that the original position of the
masochistic subject is transformed within the structure of sadism.
“Where once the suffering of pain has been experienced as a masochis
tic aim, it can be carried back into the sadistic situation and result in
the sadistic aim of inflicting pain, which will then be masochistically
enjoyed by the subject while inflicting pain upon other, through his
identification of himself with the suffering object.” (Freud 1915, 93) In
order to analyze this phase, it must be divided between the masochistic
subject and object, and the Sadistic situation and aim. For once again
Freud begins by implicitly positing an initial masochistic subject and
object, that is then transformed into a sadistic situation by an act of
identification and reversal.
Freud further clarifies this structure with an investigation of the three
stages of voyeurism and exhibitionism. “. . . (a) scoptophilia as an
activity directed towards an extraneous object; (b) abandonm ent of
the object and a turning of the scoptophilic instinct towards a part of
the subject’s own person . . . ( c ) the institution of a new subject to
whom one displays oneself in order to be looked a t.” (Freud 1915,
93—4) This new subject, which is introduced in the third time of
scoptophilia (the looking drive), represents the Symbolic body of the
Other. “ . . . at the beginning of its activity the scoptophilic instinct is
114/ Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
auto-erotic. . . . It is only later that the instinct comes (by the way of
comparison) to exchange this object for the analogous one of the body
of another.” (Freud 1915, 94) The intervention of the Symbolic Other
occurs at the same moment as the introduction of the object-choice,
both representing a movement away from the initial state of auto
erotism and the secondary state of narcissism.
Freud indicates that all of these stages represent forms of mastery,
which can be derived from the infantile subject’s attem pt to gain control
of its own limbs. (Freud 1915, 94) In the initial period of the Real,
the subject attempts to master itself on the level of perceptions and
sensations. On this level, it employs the psychotic processes of projec
tion, hallucination, and foreclosure in order to fend off any negative
experience.
In the secondary period of narcissism and latency, the subject begins
to control itself by generating a body-image that is derived from the
reflection of the image of the Other. This Imaginary dialectic of narcis
sistic self-reflection is structured by the neurotic division between the
internalized pleasure-ego and the excluded object of pain.
With the third period of puberty and the object-choice, the mastery
of the self becomes displaced onto a mastery of the Other. In the case
of the scoptophilic drive, there is a demand to be seen by the Other
(exhibitionism), or a demand to see the O ther (voyeurism). This de
m and, in turn, is always taken within a certain Symbolic structure or
scenario that serves to subjugate the subject to the will of the O ther.6
An interesting discussion of this process is found in Being and N o th
ingness, where Sartre discusses the relation between desire, freedom,
and the Other. “ . . . I assert myself in my freedom confronting the
Other, I make the O ther as a transcendence-transcended— that is, an
object. . . . I direct my look upon the Other who is looking at me. But
a look can not be looked at. . . . At this instant the O ther becomes a
being which I possess and which recognizes my freedom.” (Sartre 494)
Here, Sartre uses Hegel’s theory of the master-slave dialectic in order
to articulate the fundamental relation between the subject and the
Other. In relation to the Other, the master attem pts to assert its freedom
by controlling the freedom of the Other. This is done by transform ing
another subject into a passive object that can be possessed and m anipu
lated and who can recognize the m aster’s power and freedom.
Sartre continues by arguing that the fundamental way that a subject
becomes a master over the O ther is through the relation of sexual
desire. “My original attempt to get hold of the O ther’s free subjectivity
through his objectivity-for-me is sexual desire.” (Sartre 497) For it is
in sexual desire that the Other is transformed into an object within

a particular and determined situation. Furthermore, desire serves to
transcend the intentionality of the narcissistic subject and allow it to
enter into a relation with the dominating Other. [For I am overcome
by my desires that 1 can’t control.] “Let any man consult his own
experience; he knows how consciousness is clogged, so to speak, by
sexual desire. . . . (Sartre 504) Desire itself represents a barring of the
subject of consciousness and a form of alienation that is determined
by the Other.
Lacan’s theory of the discourse of the master is used in order to
further articulate this structure of desire:
Sl^-------------------►SI
i -------/ / ------- (a)
This discourse indicates that a subject’s desire (SI) is determined by
the desire of the Other (S2) and that the subject (#) is transcended or
barred by this structure, transforming it into being the object (a) of the
Other.
Sartre illustrates this discourse of sexual desire in relation to the act
of caressing. “ In caressing, the Other, I cause her flesh to be born
beneath my caress, under my fingers. The caress is the ensemble of
those rituals which incarnate the O ther.” (Sartre 506-7) The caress
represents the activity of a drive which is determined by a series of
rituals th at cause the desire of the O ther to exist within the Symbolic
order of language and law. “This is why the amorous gestures have a
language which could almost be said to be studied. . . . ” (Sartre 507)
By studying the drive, this language of desire also is studied and is
ultimately taken within the structure of perversion.
In Freud’s text, “A Child is Being Beaten,” this structure of perver
sion is exposed in relation to the representation of sexual difference.
“ For the fact emerges that in the masochistic phantasies, as well as the
performances that they go through for their realization, they invariably
transfer themselves into the part of a wom an; that is to say that their
masochistic attitude coincides with a feminine one. This can be easily
dem onstrated from details of the phantasies; but many patients are
aware of it themselves, and give expression to it as a subjective convic
tion. It makes no difference if in a fanciful embellishment of the mas
ochistic scene they keep up the fiction that a mischievous boy, or
page, or apprentice is going to be punished.” (Freud 1919, 184-5) In
perversion, this continuous need for the subject to play certain defined
11 6/ Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
roles within a particular situation or scenario is found. These Symbolic

situations most often involve the usage of uniforms or certain forms
of stereotypical behavior that allows each subject to know clearly who
is the masculine master and who is the feminine slave. Furthermore,
these scenarios and fantasies represent repetitions of the subject’s reso
lution of his Oedipus complex.
For the central fantasy that Freud investigates in this text is that of
a subject being beaten by his father. This fantasy serves to reenact the
intervention of the paternal Other who breaks up the Imaginary and
Oedipal relation between a subject and his (m)other. Freud dem on
strates that there are three stages to this form ation of the subject’s
fundamental fantasy and these stages are determined by the different
logical stages of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.
1) On the level of the Real, the subject states, “ i know nothing
more about it: a child is being beaten’.” (Freud 1919, 165) Here is the
foreclosure of the Name-of-the-father, for the subject has no knowl
edge of who is doing the beating. This subject is reduced to being a
pure ‘look’, that watches the scene, but can not understand or do
anything. “The experience of real scenes of beating at school produced
in the child who witnessed them a peculiarly excited feeling which was
probably of a mixed character and in which repugnance had a large
share. In a few cases the real experience of the scenes of beating was
felt to be intolerable.” (Freud 1919, 164) The intolerable part of these
scenes is that they can be neither Symbolized nor Imagined and they
cause a feeling of anxiety that is derived from the unknowability of the
O ther’s desire.
With this conception of the traum atic scene in the Real is the founda
tion of Freud’s theory of seduction. In the beginning of his analytic
practice, Freud believed that his hysterical subjects had really been
abused by their fathers. He later modified this theory of the etiology
of hysteria with his conception of the Imaginary fantasy, which was
based on his belief that neurotics often Imagined scenes of seduction
and abuse.
2) This theory of the Imaginary traum a can be articulated by the
second phase of the fantasy where the subject states, “ ‘My father
is beating the child whom I hate.’ ” (Freud 1919, 170) This is the
identification with an Imaginary Other within the structure of the
Oedipus complex, because it is the other child that is being beaten in
order to show that the father loves only the subject. “ ‘My father does
not love this other child, he loves only me.’ ” (Freud 1919, 172) This
Imaginary fantasy represents a defensive reaction against the fear that

the father hates the subject.
The intervention of the Symbolic O ther is repressed below the sub
ject’s demand for love. “The fantasy obviously gratifies the child’s
jealousy and is dependent on the erotic side of its life, but it is also
powerfully reinforced by the child’s egoistic interests.” (Freud 1919,
170) In other words, the narcissistic child demands to receive all of the
love of its parents and does not want to share it with another.
Freud continues by indicating that this second stage of the fantasy
is located between the primary level of infantile sexuality and the third
stage of sadism. “N ot clearly sexual, not in itself sadistic, but yet the
stuff from which both will later com e.” (Freud 1919, 173) This middle,
Imaginary stage of narcissistic identification is transcended when the
subject is introduced into the Symbolic relation of sadomasochism,
which serves to reverse the secondary stage of Oedipal love. “The
phantasy of the period of incestuous love had said: 'H e (my father)
loves only me, and not the other child, for he is beating it.’ The sense
of guilt can discover no punishment more severe than the reversal of
this trium ph: 'N o, he does not love you, for he is beating you.’ ” (Freud
1919, 174) It is through the introduction of the subject’s feeling of
guilt th at this reversal takes place.
3) This final level of the fantasy can be called the Symbolic fantasy
because it serves to structure the relation between the subject and its
affirmation of the desire of the Other. In this third period, the subject
affirms, “ My father is beating m e .. . .” (Freud 1919, 175) If this “me”
is equated with the ego, and the “father” with the Symbolic O ther of
law and language, this phrase can be restated as, “The Symbolic Other
is transcending my ego.” In other words, with the submission to the
desire of the Other, the subject’s intentionality, which is the basis of
its consciousness, has been effaced or barred.
W hat occurs on this Symbolic level of fantasy is the combining of
the sexuality of the subject with the punishm ent of the Other, which
then results in a perverse structure. “This being beaten is now a conver
gence of the sense of guilt and sexual love. . . . Here for the first time
we have the essence of m asochism.” (Freud 1919, 175) This relation
of masochism now can be written with the structure of the drive (£vD),
which Lacan formulates as the relation between the subject of the
unconscious and sexuality (S), and the demand (D) of the Other. The
symbol “v ” in this equation not only stands for the com bination of the
logical functions of conjunction (v) and disjunction ( a ) , but also for
1 1 8 / Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
the effacement o f the ego o f Imaginary consciousness. For m asochism

represents the barring of the Imaginary level of narcissistic love and
consciousness by the Symbolic law of the Other.
With this relation of the drive, locate Freud’s three fundamental
discoveries can be located:
1 ) Sexuality 2 ) Narcissism 3) Death drive
s A
D
If each of these discoveries is considered as a set, and we represent

them with Lacan’s sym bols, the logic of the drive and the structure of
perversion can be formulated.
This logic indicates that in perversion there is a combination of the
sexuality of the unconscious subject (#) with the demand (D) and law
of the Other, which results in the barring (v) of the narcissistic ego of
consciousness. This structure can be used in order to enter into Freud’s
discussion o f the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
The Death Drive in the Beyond
One of the central themes of this text revolves around the repetition
of traum atic scenes, which seems to disprove the pleasure principle.
For this principle of Imaginary stability is based on the ego’s attempt
to control its world by inhibiting high levels of both sexual and painful
excitation. The pleasure principle is upset by the return of repressed
m emories and sexual fixations, which push the subject beyond the
intentionality of its own ego and tow ards the Otherness of the reality
principle. . . the pleasure principle is replaced by the reality principle.
This latter principle does not abandon the intention o f ultimately
obtaining pleasure, but it nevertheless dem ands and carries into effect
the postponem ent of satisfaction, the abandonm ent of a number of
possibilities of gaining satisfaction and the tem porary toleration of
unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure.” (Freud
1 9 2 0 ,4 ) The reality principle is structured by the drive because it serves
to put into relation the demand (D) o f the Other for the delaying of
gratification with the subject (i) of sexuality by transcending (v) the
Imaginary pleasure principle. Once again, there is a structure o f the
resolution of the Oedipus complex because the Real subject ($) must
give up (v) its narcissistic relation with the (m)other and accept the law
and demand (D) of the father.
This structure is seen in action in Freud’s discussion of children’s
play. Freud begins this part of the Beyond by describing the way
that his grandson has already accepted the dominance of the reality
principle. “ He was . . . on good terms with his parents and their one
servant-girl, and tributes were paid to his being a ‘good boy.’ He did
not disturb his parents at night, he conscientiously obeyed orders not
to touch certain things or go into certain rooms, and above all he never
cried when his mother left him for a few hours.” (Freud 1920, 8) This
subject has already consented to the prohibitions and restrictions of
the O ther and has even accepted his separation from his Imaginary
(m)other.
Even though his grandson could barely speak, Freud shows that this
child was already a subject of the Symbolic order. For what this child
mastered in his game was the coming and going of his desired object
(the mother), by replacing this Real and Imaginary object with the
binary opposition of two signifiers that represented presence (a-a-a-a
for there) and absence (o-o-o-o for gone). “ I eventually realized that it
was a game and that the only use he made of any of his toys was to
play ‘gone’ with them. . . . The child had a wooden reel with a piece
of string tied around it. . . . What he did was to hold the reel by the
string and very skillfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so
that it disappeared into it, at the same time he uttering his expressive
‘o-o-o-o.’ He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and
hailed its reappearance with a joyful ‘da’ [‘there’]. This, then, was the
complete game— disappearance and return.” (Freud 1920, 8) Lacan’s
master discourse can be used to elaborate the structure of this game:
There - SI ^ §2- Gone
Child - S a) - Mother
The m aster signifier (S1) represents the localization of the lost object
(the mother) as present in relation to the possibility of its absence (S2).
In other words, the subject can only affirm the Symbolic presence of
an object if he also affirms its possible absence. For example, in Freud’s
theory of castration the subject can only affirm to have the phallus if
it is first threatened with its possible loss. For the phallus is the signifier
(51) of sexuality which represents the subject (t) for another signifier
(52) which, in itself, represents the desire of the O ther and the object-
choice.
Freud underlines this im portance of the Symbolic order in this struc
ture when he relates this game to the realm of culture. “ It was related
to the child’s great cultural achievement— the instinctual renunciation
(that is, the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction) which he had made
in allowing his m other to go away without protesting. He compensated
himself for this, as it were, by staging the disappearance and return of
the objects within his reach.” (Freud 1920, 8) His lost object, the
mother, is able to ‘return’ on the level of the Symbolic representation
of its absence. Here is the return of the repressed in the form of the
absent O ther (S2).
Ultimately, the absence of the O ther represents the O ther’s death.
Lacan’s radical reading of Freud is to argue that when he writes about
the death drive, the ‘death’ to which he is referring is the death that is
done through the working of the Symbolic order. In the case of the
Fort/Da game, it is the replacement of the lost mother with the symbols
of her presence and absence which indicates the way that “the word is
the death of the thing.” “Thus the symbol manifests itself first of all as
the murder of the thing, and this death constitutes the eternalization
of his desire.” (Lacan 1966, 104) The child will continue to desire
his lost object because his m other has been replaced by a Symbolic
substitute.
This means that by re-presenting the Other, the subject loses the
mother. In fact, Lacan argues that things can only be lost in the
Symbolic order because nothing is lacking in the Real, and the Imagi
nary order tends to cover up all loss. Death itself can only be experi
enced through its Symbolic representation. More so, since desire only
arises out of loss and absence, there is an intimate connection between
the sexuality of the subject {&) and the Death (D) of the Other. Perhaps
the best way to read Lacan’s formula of the drive (S5vD) is the conjunc
tion between sexuality and death.
However, it is not only the O ther who dies or disappears in this
structure, but it also can be the subject itself who is effaced. “One day
the child’s m other had been away for several hours and on her return
was met with the words ‘Baby o-o-o-o!’ which was at first incompre
hensible. It soon turned out, however, that during this long period of
solitude the child had found a method of making himself disappear.
He had discovered his reflection in a full-length m irror which did not
quite reach the ground, so that by crouching down he could make his
mirror-image gone.” (Freud 1920, 9, note 1) The subject moves beyond

the m irror stage of narcissistic self-reflection towards an acceptance
of the Symbolic reality principle and the acknowledgement of the
possibility of his own absence or death. This example offers a clear
illustration of w hat Lacan means by the barred subject (£). For this
subject is not the master of language, but rather he is subjected by and
alienated in language.
In this text, Freud asks once again why the subject repeats this
painful experience of losing his loved object and thus giving up the
dominance of his pleasure principle. His response is based on the third
vicissitude of the drive, which deals with the reversal from passivity to
activity. “At the outset he was in a passive position—he was overpow
ered by the experience; but, by repeating it, unpleasurable though it
was, as a game, he took on an active part. These efforts might be put
down to an instinct for mastery that was acting independently of
w hether the memory was in itself pleasurable or not.” (Freud 1920,
10) The drive for mastery is structured by the dialectic between the
passivity of the original subject and the activity of the Symbolic game.
This third vicissitude serves to go beyond the secondary opposition of
pleasure and pain, and indicates that the Symbolic dialectic of passivity
and activity is not regulated by the pleasure principle.
Freud offers another example of this movement beyond the pleasure
principle when he describes the way that children often repeat their
most painful experiences with others. “ It is clear that in their play
children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them
in real life, and that in doing so they abreact the strength of the
impression and, as one might put it, make themselves master of the
situation. . . . It can also be observed that the unpleasurable nature of
an experience does not always unsuit it for play. If the doctor looks
down on a child’s throat or carries out some small operation on him,
we may be quite sure that these frightening experiences will be the
subject of the next game. . . .” (Freud 1920, 11) Thus, the subject uses
the Symbolic order of representation in order to master and repeat
painful experiences.
This compulsion to repeat a traum atic event in the child’s play also
allows the subject to displace negative experiences onto the Other. “As
the child passes over from the passivity of the experience to the activity
of the game, he hands on the disagreeable experience to one of his
playmates and in this way revenges himself on a substitute.” (Freud
1920, 11) Passivity is related to the Real experience of pain, while
activity is connected to the Symbolic activity of the game. In the act of
revenge, the subject attempts to link together the Real and the Symbolic
by instituting a law of desire that is articulated between the subject of
excitation and the Other of law.
This same dialectic between desire and the law is found in the
clinic of perversion. This can be illustrated by turning to Foucault’s
discussion, in The Order o f Things, of the M arquis de Sade. “ . . . that
inexhaustible body of work manifests the precarious balance between
the law w ithout law of desire and the meticulous ordering of the
discursive representation. Here, the order of discourse finds its Limit
and its Law. . . . The libertine is he who, while yielding to all the
fantasies of desire and to each of its furies, can, but also must, illuminate
their slightest movement with a lucid and deliberately elucidated repre
sentation. There is a strict order governing the life of the libertine.. . . ”
(Foucault 209) W hat Foucault underlines in his reading of de Sade is
that the discourse of perversion is structured by the Symbolic order of
representation and law. For the pervert can only find the law of his
desire if it first forces an Other subject into a relation that serves to
reproduce the subject’s own submission to the law of the Other.
Therefore, like children’s play, the perverse scenarios are always
dom inated by a compulsion to repeat and represent a high level of
excitation within the strict order of law and discourse. . . every desire
must be expressed in the pure light of a representative discourse. Hence
the rigid sequence of ‘scenes’ (the scene, in Sade, is profligacy subjected
to the order of representation) and, within the scenes, the meticulous
balance between the conjugation of bodies and the concatenation of
reasons.” (Foucault 209—10) This representation of desire within the
scenes and scenarios of perversion also allows the subject to fully
submit to the O ther in the state of being in love.
Freud implicitly argues that without this perverse relationship of
dominance and submission, a love relation would not be possible. For
in love, the desire of the O ther transcends the subject, and this can only
occur if consents to give up one’s own intentionality and narcissism is
given. Freud discusses this process in Group Psychology and the Analy
sis o f the Ego, where he ties the state of being in love to the usage of
hypnosis.
Love, Hypnosis, and Perversion
In both hypnosis and love, there is an idealization of the Other that

serves to deplete the ego of its power and energy.7 “ . . . the ego becomes
more and more unassuming and modest, and the object more and more
sublime and precious, until at last it gets possession of the entire self-
love of the ego, whose self-sacrifice thus follows as a natural conse
quence. The object has, so to speak, consumed the ego.” (Freud 1921,
45) This is the effacement of the ego (#) which is caused by the sublime
object (a) of desire. It is this relation (#va) between the divided subject
(i ) and the sublime object that determines the structure of the fantasy
for Lacan.
For Freud, this process of barring the ego or subject is made possible
by the substitution of the object for the ego ideal. “Contemporaneously
with this ‘devotion’ of the ego to the object, which is no longer to be
distinguished from a sublimated devotion to an abstract idea, the
functions allotted to the ego ideal entirely cease to operate. The criti
cism exercised by that agency is silent; everything that the object does
and asks for is right and blameless. Conscience has no application to
anything that is done for the sake of the object; in the blindness of love
remorselessness is carried to the pitch of crim e.” (Freud 1921, 45) The
lover’s devotion to its object serves to place the Other in a position
where it can be neither criticized nor questioned. In this structure, the
subject may be pushed to commit any crime because he must follow
the demand of the Other.
In hypnosis, this same type of relation is allowed to surface because
the hypnotist becomes the object of the subject and takes the place of
the subject’s ideal. “ From being in love to hypnosis is evidently only a
short step . . . there is the same humble subjection, the same compli
ance, the same absence of criticism, towards the hypnotist as towards
the loved object. There is the same sapping of the subject’s own initia
tive; no one can doubt that the hypnotist has stepped into the place of
the ego ideal.” (Freud 1921,46) It is the ego and the ideal of the subject
that are transcended by the object in the structure of hypnotism.
Freud elaborates this structure of hypnosis and the love relation by
developing a logical schema:
ego ideal ego object
In this structure, the object takes the place of the ego ideal by tran
scending the ego. In other words, the subject submits to the demand
of the O ther because it has allowed the Other to take over the role of
its conscience.
W hat ties hypnotism to the Symbolic order of law and relations is

that it represents, for Freud, the essential element of any group form a
tion, which is the relation between an individual and a leader. “It
contains an additional element of paralysis derived from the relation
between someone with superior power and someone who is without
power and helpless.. . . ” (Freud 1921, 47) In the structure of the drive,
it is the subject (#) who is helpless and w ithout power in relation to
the dem and (D) of the Other. The structure of the drive (#vD) deter
mines the logic of hypnosis and the state of being in love. In front of
the power of this Symbolic Other (A), the subject (#) is returned to its
initial state of being a passive object (a) for the Other. This structure
will be illustrated by turning to a “case” of sado-masochism which
was re-presented in the film Nine Vi Weeks.
The Re-presentation of Perversion
It is not by chance that a film is turned to in order to elaborate on

the structure of perversion. For Freud often ties the clinic of perversion
to the acting out of certain scenes and scenarios. It is almost as if the
structure of the drive can only be presented by being re-presented in a
scene of sexuality or mastery.
In the film Nine 1/2 Weeks, John (the sadist) first attem pts to master
Elizabeth (the masochist), by blindfolding her when they make love.
This scene demonstrates how the masochist’s narcissism and intention
ality is transcended by the activity of the Other. Because she is blind
folded, Elizabeth cannot see the O ther and she can not predict what
will happen next. She has surrendered her will completely to the Other
and she can no longer judge or criticize her lover. In this sense, she has
become the passive object (a) of the drive; she can no longer see her
reflected image nor can she direct her consciousness intentionally.
In another scene, this same situation is repeated when John leaves
Elizabeth suspended on top of a Ferris wheel. Here, she is not only
trapped by the O ther’s desire, but also her anxiety is caused by the
possibility that she can fall. Lacan has argued that it is the object (a)
which causes the anxiety of the subject by being placed in a position
where it can fall.
W hat makes this relation openly perverse is the way that John
continually attem pts to place himself in the position of Elizabeth’s
superego. In one scene, he leaves her alone in his apartm ent and then
he calls her from outside on a public phone in order to ask her if she
has been a good girl and if she has been looking through his things.
When he finds out that she has not obeyed him, he returns home and
states that he is going to punish her. When she resists him, he proceeds
to rape her.
W hat we find in this series of events is John’s attem pt to find a law
to his own desire by becoming Elizabeth’s superego. He begins by
calling her when he is not there, and thus he becomes a pure voice
th at has become detached from his Real presence. Furthermore, this
superegoic voice is attached to his omniscient power to observe her
when he is not with her. He knows that she has looked through his
things even though he has been away.
When Elizabeth attempts to resist Jo h n ’s punishment, her will is
overcome by his sexuality and desire. For he forces her to make love
to him and in this act she not only succumbs to his power but also to
her own sexuality. In the moment of intense excitation and anxiety,
she loses her own intentionality and submits to the desire of the Other.
In another scene, John, who works on Wall Street, makes Elizabeth
crawl on all fours in order to chase after money that he throws in front
of her. Once again, Elizabeth is placed in the position of the humiliated
subject who is forced to follow the commands of a sadistic Other. In
this scene it is the money falling from John’s hand represents the object
(a) that exceeds his own will and causes his desire.
W hat makes this film so interesting is that this love relation is tied
to a hypnotic relation. John gives Elizabeth a watch and asks her to
look at it everyday at noon and to think of him touching her. Later
on, Elizabeth states that she thinks that she has been hypnotized be
cause she cannot think about anything else besides her lover. The watch
itself is like the hypnotist’s look which overpowers the subject and acts
as a referent to the om nipotent Other.
Freud argues that the hypnotic relation of power is dominated by
the structure of the castration complex and the paternal Other. “ By
measures that he takes, then, the hypnotist awakens in the subject a
portion of his archaic heritage which has also made him compliant
tow ards his parents and which had experienced an individual re-anima
tion in his relation to his father; what is thus awakened is the idea of
a param ount and dangerous personality, towards whom only a passive-
masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one’s will has to be surrend
ered. . . .” (Freud 1921,59) The passive-masochistic subject surrenders
its will to the Other because it feels threatened or menaced by the
return of the primal father.
Implicitly for Freud, society itself, which is based on the resolution
of the Oedipus complex and the transcendence of the desire of the

Other, is dependent on this threat of castration which is performed
by the Symbolic father. In perversion and hypnosis, a repetition and
reenactm ent of this process of socialization is found.
From Hypnosis to Analysis
By returning to Beyond, it is found that the analytic experience itself

can take on the structure of a perversion. “ Patients repeat all of these
unwanted situations and painful emotions in the transference and
revive them with the greatest ingenuity. They seek to bring about the
interruption of the treatm ent while it is still incomplete; they contrive
once more to feel themselves scorned, to oblige the physician to speak
severely to them and treat them coldly; they discover appropriate
objects for their jealousy. . . .” (Freud 1920, 15) Here, Freud defines
the transference as a reenactment of the past relation between the
om nipotent father and the masochistic subject, who demands to be
scorned and abused.
This compulsion to repeat within the transference is in turn related
to the movement from the idealization of the Other to the rejection of
the Other. Freud describes this transition from the ideal (SI) of social
relations to the object (a) of debasement when he gives examples of
this compulsion to repeat the same failed acts and relations. “Thus we
have come across people all of whose human relationships have the
same outcome: such as the benefactor who is abandoned in anger after
a time by each of his proteges, however much they may differ from
one another, and who thus seems doomed to taste all the bitterness of
ingratitude; or the man whose friendships all end in betrayal by his
friends; or the man who time after time in the course of his life raises
someone else into a position of great private or public authority and
then, after a certain interval, himself upsets the authority and replaces
him by a new one. . . . ” (Freud 1920, 16) This repetition of failed
relationships is very common in w hat is now called “borderline” per
sonalities. W hat is called “borderline” today most often refers to what
Freud called perversion.
In the case of borderline personalities, there is most often a split
between the extreme idealization of the O ther and the debasement of
the Other. As Kernberg has pointed out, the borderline personality
cannot tolerate the ambivalence that dominates the neurotic’s object-
choice. In order to avoid this ambivalence, the borderline either denies
it or splits it off into its extremes. The result of this is that the subject’s
own personality becomes divided ($).
Often in the cases of perverse or borderline personalities, the subject
is attracted to an object that repulses or disgusts him. Freud argues
that the love object must be placed in this position of debasement in
order to avoid any connection to the original incestuous object-choice.
This means that the debased object represents a reversal of the idealized
(m)other.
For Lacan this movement, which begins with an initial stage of
idealization and then terminates with a final moment of debasement
or abandonm ent, defines the process of analysis itself. In the beginning
of the transference, the analyst is placed in the ideal position of the
“subject supposed to know ,” while at the end of analysis there is a
movement away from this idealization of the Other and an acceptance
of the analyst as the rejected object (a) of the subject’s drive.
This object is called a rejected object, because it represents the lost
part of the subject, which causes him to desire and to love. Furthermore,
Lacan has defined love as the act of giving to someone something that
which one doesn’t have oneself. In analysis, this becomes clear when
the analyst refrains from responding to the subject’s demand for love
and understanding, but stimulates the patient’s desire from his mere
presence.
Furthermore, by refusing to give into the subject’s demand for love,
the analyst is placed in the position of the unknowable “x ” of desire,
which refers to the impossibility to Symbolize the Real of sexuality.8
For what the subject desires to know is the cause of its sexuality, which
is itself unknowable. “The indefiniteness of all our discussions on what
we describe as metapsychology is of course due to the fact that we
know nothing of the nature of the excitatory process that takes place
in the elements of the psychical systems. . . . We are consequently
operating all the time with a large unknown factor, which we are
obliged to carry into every new form ula.” (Freud 1920, 24-5) Lacan
has Symbolized the logical consistency of this “unknown factor” of
sexuality by the object (a), which, at the same time, represents the
presence of the analyst in the analytic cure, the object that is circum
vented in the drive, and a referent of the lost period of infantile sexu
ality.
The Traumatic Object of the Drive
For Lacan, the object not only causes the subject’s desire, but also
his anxiety, which is defined by the subject’s awareness of the impossi
bility to Symbolize the Real. In this sense, w hat makes the primal scene
so traum atic for a subject is that it can neither Imagine nor Symbolize
w hat is being perceived. This encounter with the Real, then, causes the
subject of consciousness to fade away and this results in a primal
release of pure excitation which translates itself into anxiety.
W hat is found in the structure of perversion and the repetition
compulsion, is a generation of this anxiety that helps to protect the
subject against an invasion of the Real. “ It will be seen, then, that the
preparedness for anxiety and the hypercathexis of the receptive systems
constitute the last line of defense of the shield against stim uli.” (Freud
1920, 25) This final method of defense against the intrusion of high
levels of Real stimulation beyond the shield of the pleasure principle
is also evident in anxiety-dreams. “The dreams are endeavoring to
master the stimulus retrospectively, by developing the anxiety whose
omission was the cause of the traum atic neurosis.” (Freud 1920, 26)
In other words, it is the lack of anxiety that causes the traum a and the
generation of anxiety that then serves to correct this past omission.
In the analysis of the film Nine H alf Weeks it was shown how
the sadist attem pts to control the masochist by effacing the subject’s
intentionality and consciousness. This loss of intentionality can be
equated with a generation of anxiety that is caused by the unknowabil-
ity of the desire of the Other. Lacan symbolizes this process as
a ------- ►i , in order to formulate that the division or fading of the
subject (#) is caused by the object (a), which represents the presence of
the O ther’s unsymbolized desire. It is because it is not known w hat the
O ther wants that a subject becomes anguished.
This fundamental relation of anxiety is most often hidden or re
pressed by the Imaginary shield of consciousness. For in consciousness,
the ego attem pts to anticipate w hat the Other is thinking and de
manding, and everything becomes expected and familiar. However, if
the desire of the Other is by definition unknowable, the ego must
repress the presence of the O ther’s desire by concentrating on its
demand.
In perversion, there is a resurfacing of this repressed desire of the
Other, which is linked to the generation of the anxiety of the subject.
As in the case of the repetition compulsion, in perversion there is a
compulsion to reenact a traum atic scene in order to generate the anxiety
that was not present during the original event. This compulsion also
serves to structure the drive itself, which represents the “ . . . urge
inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things which the
living being has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external
Beyond the Pleasure Principle / 129
disturbing forces. . . .” (Freud 1920, 30) After the secondary state of

repression, the subject attempts to return to the initial state of the
primitive Real in order to master the situation from a position of
activity. Freud calls this third period of the symptom-formation the
return of the repressed, and the clinical division of psychosis, neurosis,
and perversion, responds to the different ways that these subjects both
reject the initial state of sexual excitation, and the way that they return
to this initial state.
It has been argued that the psychotic forecloses the Symbolization
of its sexuality and that which is rejected in the Symbolic returns in
the Real in the form of a projected hallucination. In neurosis, the
initial form of sexuality is repressed and then returns in the form of a
symptom. While in perversion, the Real of sexual excitation is negated
in the structure of the drive, which entails it being both affirmed and
denied.
The drive itself represents a conflictual relation between the Real
subject of sexuality and the Symbolic demand of the Other. By trying
to create a law of desire and sexuality, the pervert attem pts to combine
these two opposing forces.
For Freud, the superego and the ego ideal represent themselves, the
internalization of this dialectical relation between the primitive Real
of sexuality and the Symbolic category of law. “The ego ideal is there
fore the heir of the Oedipus complex, and thus it is also the expression
of the most powerful impulses and most im portant libidinal vicissitudes
of the id. By setting up the ego ideal, the ego has mastered the Oedipus
complex and at the same time placed itself in subjection to the id.”
(Freud 1923,26) The ego is subjected to both the law of the father, that
serves to resolve the Oedipus complex, and the powerful instinctual
impulses of the id.
It may be asked why Freud insists on connecting this Symbolic
function of the law to the primitive Real of the id within the structure
of the superego and the drive. The answer to this question seems to be
two-fold. “The super-ego owes its special position in the ego, or in
relation to the ego, to a factor which must be considered from two
sides: on the one hand it was the first identification and one which
took place while the ego was still feeble, and on the other hand it is
the heir to the Oedipus complex and has thus introduced the most
momentous objects into the ego. The super-ego’s relation to the latter
alterations of the ego is roughly similar to that of the primary phase
of childhood to later sexual life after puberty.” (Freud 1923, 38) Freud
combines his theory of sexual development with his theory of the
psychical apparatus by equating the id with the initial phase of sexuality

and the superego with the period of puberty. Once again this formation
is structured by the three-part theory of the return of the repressed.
For the superego represents the return of the id (infantile sexuality) in
relation to the law of the father (in puberty).
Furthermore, Freud argues that the superego derives its power from
the initial helplessness of the subject in relation to the Other, it has
been pointed out that, in the structure of perversion, this same return
to the helpless subject in relation to the om nipotent O ther occurs. The
superego is itself a perverse structure that represents the resolution of
the Oedipus complex through the submission of the subject to the law
of the Other.
it can be seen clearly why Lacan transform ed the word perversion
into pere-version, in order to stress the role of the Symbolic father (pere
in French) in the structure of perversion. For Freud, it is the internalized
father of the superego that represents the master of the subject’s ego and
the sole possible solution to the Oedipus complex. “ . . . it nevertheless
preserves throughout life the character given to it by its derivation from
the father-complex— namely, the capacity to stand apart from the ego
and to m aster it. it is a memorial of the former weakness and depen
dence of the ego, and the mature ego remains subject to its domination.
As a child was once under the compulsion to obey its parents, so the
ego submits to the categorical imperative of the super-ego.” (Freud
1923, 38) The repetition compulsion can be derived from the subject’s
relation to the Symbolic intervention of the father within the discourse
of the master.
in fact, it is this discourse that articulates the structure of the first
form of psychoanalysis, which is hypnosis. “ . . . that which thus comes
to the help of the compulsion to repeat is the factor of ‘suggestion’ in
the treatm ent— that is, the patient’s submissiveness to the physician,
which has its roots deep in his unconscious parental com plex.” (Freud
1920, 14, note 2) In this structure, the subject (S) takes the analyst as
its ego ideal (SI) which is then linked to the O ther’s demand (S2)
or suggestion. However, Freud indicates that this structure of the
compulsion, in relation to the demand of the drive, always leaves a
residue of dissatisfaction. “The repressed instinct never ceases to strive
for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a
prim ary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive forma
tions and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct’s
persisting tension; and it is the difference in am ount between the
pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually
achieved which provides the driving factor which will permit no halting
at any position attained. . . .” (Freud 1920, 36) Lacan has named this
persistence of tension within the structure of the drive the object (a)
which is the product of the discourse of the master.
it shall be seen in the final chapter of this book why Lacan has based
his theory of the analytic discourse on the centrality of this object,
which is in turn based on an inversion of the discourse of the master.
The history of psychoanalytic technique has been defined, in part, by
Freud’s movement away from his initial usage of hypnosis. For hypno
sis represents a repetition of the subject’s relation to his paternal Other
and demands a reenactment of the complex of castration. Lacan
searches to define a process of the end of analysis that moves beyond
the impasse of castration and serves to articulate a separation from
the perverse relation between the subject of the unconscious and the
dem and of the Other.
IV
The Logic
of the Object (a)
6
The Object of the End of Analysis
The final part of this book will deal with Lacan’s theory of the end
of analysis which is centered on his concept of the object (a). An
examination Freud’s late text, “Analysis Terminable and Intermina
ble,” will show how Lacan’s theory of the ‘pass’1serves to move beyond
the impasse of castration, which threatens to render Freud’s theory of
analysis interminable.
The Resistance of Ego Psychology
In the beginning of Freud’s text, there is a criticism of O tto Rank’s

technique, which is very similar to Lacan’s critique of ego psychology.2
Freud argues against R ank’s desire to shorten the duration of an analy
sis by claiming that Rank’s technique has been influenced by the
“ American way of life.” “ Moreover, it was a child of its time, conceived
under the stress of the contrast between the post-war misery of Europe
and the ‘prosperity’ of America, and designed to accelerate the tempo
of analytic therapy to suit the rush of American life.” (Freud 1937,
234) Freud criticizes Rank for fitting his technique to the fast paced
post-w ar style of America.
Lacan has also used this same criticism, but in a slightly different
way. He has argued that the history of psychoanalysis has been shaped
by the post-war dominance of the Anglo-Saxon currents of psychology
and ego analysis, which have stressed the individual over the social
and the need for adaptation over the desire for transform ation. This
“conservative” approach to analysis was motivated by the mass migra
tion of European analysts to the United States during and after the
Second W orld War. These analysts (Hartm ann, Kris, Loewenstein,
etc.) who formulated the basic tenants of ego psychology, were recent
immigrants to America and were undergoing themselves the need to
assimilate to the American way of life. W hat they tryed to create was
135
a form of psychoanalysis that stressed the role of the individual’s ego

and its ability to adapt to the style of modern life, “ it is the ahistoricism
that defines the assimilation required if one is to be recognized in the
society constituted by that culture” (Lacan 1966, 115) America, the
land of the immigrant, pushes people to forget their past history and
traditions in order to adapt to the New World.
Furtherm ore, this form of adaptation always is related to the role of
capitalism in America. The analysts who created many of the analytic
groups in America demanded that all of the analysts have a medical
degree in order for them to be respected as doctors. Also, because
they were doctors, these analysts desired to be paid likewise and they
m aintained a high price level. Even the analysts who were not medical
doctors realized that they would be more respected if they charged
more. The different analytic associations began to regulate the cost of
analysis and the num ber of sessions that a training analyst had to
undergo. Lacan argues that this strict regulation of the time and the
cost of analysis instituted an obsessional structure where each analyst
had to comply with the demand of the O ther for order and regularity.
Lacan’s Interpretation of the Time of Analysis
What Lacan attem pts to introduce into analysis, through his use of
short and variable sessions, is an effort to break up this habitual order
of security and regularity by stressing the unknowability of the desire
of the analyst. The obsessional subject is always attem pting to antici
pate w hat the O ther will do and w hat he is thinking. In this way, the
neurotic limits the possibility of being surprised or caught in a vulnera
ble position.
By transform ing the time of the analytic session from a fixed time
period of fifty minutes to a variable time period, Lacan turns the ending
of each session into an analytic interpretation which forces the subject
to confront the desire of the analyst. At the end of each session, the
subject must ask why the analyst ended the session. It is because the
subject cannot answer this question that the analyst is placed in the
position of the object (a) as the cause of the subject’s desire to know.
This m anipulation of the time of analysis, as a form of interpretation,
is utilized by Freud in the Wolfman case. “ . . . the patient found his
present situation quite comfortable and did not intend to take any step
which would bring him nearer to the end of his treatment. It was a
case of the treatm ent obstructing itself: the analysis was in danger of
The O bject o f the End o f Analysis / 137
failing as a result of its partial success. In this predicament I resorted

to the heroic remedy of fixing a date for the conclusion of the analysis.
At the beginning of a period of treatm ent 1 told the patient that the
coming year was to be the last of his analysis. . . . His resistances
crumbled away, and in the last months of treatm ent he was able to
produce all the memories and to discover the connecting links which
were necessary for the understanding of his early neurosis and his
recovery from the illness which he was then suffering.” (Freud 1937,
234—5) In Freud is found the logic behind Lacan’s use of the short
session, especially in the case of an obsessional neurosis.3 These sub
ject’s often settle into a comfortable position in their analysis, where
they say just enough to keep their analysis going, but not enough to
discover anything new. In this way the obsessional can control the
analysis and can use the analyst as the ideal O ther who verifies what
the subject thinks and believes. In this structure, the analyst is reduced
to being a m irror that simply reflects the subject’s own narcissistic
image of itself.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle—The Analyst as the Object
In order to break up this Imaginary relation of comfort and self

reflection, the analyst must intervene in such a way that an unknown
element is introduced into the subject’s discourse. Lacan defines the
position of the analyst in the analytic discourse as being the object (a).
He also argues that this object is in opposition to the pleasure principle
which dominates the narcissistic relation with the Other. For this object
has no specular other and is excluded from the reflexive nature of
Imaginary consciousness. Furthermore, Lacan indicates that this object
is without a signifier and it cannot be a source of identification. In fact,
the analyst can only maintain this position by refusing to respond to
the subject’s demand for reciprocity and love.
The analyst take on this role of being the object (a) because of the
setting of the analytic situation. Once the patient is on the couch and
can no longer see the analyst, there is a reduction of the subject’s
Imaginary world. For the Imaginary phenomenology of consciousness
is based on the subject’s ability to understand and to perceive w hat the
Other is thinking and doing. By removing the analyst from the subject’s
field of vision, analysis offers the subject the possibility to move beyond
the close boundaries of this Imaginary world of self-reflection.
In this structure, the analyst (a) becomes a pure look that is placed
behind the subject (t) and serves to cause his desire. Lacan articulates
this formation with his discourse of the analyst:
Figure 6.1
In this structure, the analyst is the unknowable element who causes

the subject (t) to desire and who serves to produce a loss of identifica
tion (SI). For an object cannot be identified with unless it has no
signifier or specular image. The object (a) can be equated with the
negation of the signifier of identification (SI): a = SI.
Freud’s Theory of the End of Analysis
Furthermore, remembering that Lacan uses the symbol S 1 to indicate

both the phallus and the neurotic symptom, it can be seen, that the
object (a) is connected to both the theory of the end of analysis and
the awareness of castration. Freud argues that at the end of analysis
the subject must not only lose certain symptoms, but he must also
overcome his resistances to analysis itself. “ An analysis is ended when
analyst and patient cease to meet for the analytic session. This happens
when two conditions have been approximately fulfilled. First, the pa
tient must no longer suffer from his former symptoms and must have
overcome his various anxieties and inhibitions and, secondly, the ana
lyst must have formed the opinion that so much repressed material
has been brought to consciousness, so much that was inexplicable
elucidated, and so much inner resistance overcome that no repetition
of the patient’s specific pathological processes is to be feared.” (Freud
1937, 237). The end of analysis requires a separation between the
analyst (a) and the subject (#), resulting in a loss of symptoms (SI),
inhibitions, and modes of resistance.
These neurotic forms of defence (symptoms, inhibitions and resis
tances) were previously tied to the Imaginary demand to rid the subject
of all high levels of unconscious sexual excitation. In the reading of
Freud’s theory of the drive and Lacan’s discourse of the master, this
aim of the narcissistic pleasure principle was connected to the ideal
signifier (SI) of the Other. The object (a) also was oppossed to this
signifier (SI) of identification, so it can be inferred that Freud’s theory
of the end of analysis, which is based on the loss of symptoms, resist
The Object of the End o f Analysis / 139
an ces, an d in h ib id o n s, a lso m u st req u ire a loss o f id en tification and a

sep a ra tio n fro m the S y m b o lic O ther.
T h is stru ctu re o f th e end o f a n a ly sis can be ou tlin ed b y retu rn in g to
L a c a n ’ s sch em a L:
Subject S a' image o f the other
object a A Other
T h e lo g ic o f th is stru ctu re is defined, in p a rt, by the o p p o sitio n betw een

the su b je ct (S) an d the O th er (A) an d betw een the im age o f the oth er
(a') and th e o b je ct (a). W h at m ed iates these tw o extrem es o f the sou rce
o f se x u a lity (S) an d the a c tiv ity o f L a n g u a g e (A) is the Im a g in a ry
p rin cip le o f p le a su re , w h ich is determ ined b y the n arcissistic im age o f
the o th er (a') an d its relatio n to the ego id eal (S I). It is the Im a g in a ry
illu sio n o f un ity an d to ta lity , th a t defines the su b je c t’s ego and its belief
in the ideal relatio n w ith the O ther.
A lie n a tio n and S ep a ra tio n in A n a ly sis
T h is Im a g in a ry re la tio n betw een the su b ject an d the o th er can be

s y m b o liz e d w ith the lo g ica l fu n ctio n o f co n ju n ctio n (v) o r alien tatio n .
T h e aim o f the d riv e (SvD) is the ideal fo rm o f u nion b ecau se it m akes
tw o su b jects believe th at th ey are O n e (S I).
O p p o se d to this Im a g in a ry aim o f u n ity and the lo g ical fu nction o f
c o n ju n ctio n is the o b je ct (a) w h ich represents the relatio n o f d isju n ctio n
(a ). T h is o b je c t rep resen ts th at w h ich is e x clu d e d from b o th the su bject
and the O th er and it is this o b je ct th at, in a n a ly sis, p ro v es th at there
is n o sex u a l relatio n .
In o th er term s, the o b je c t (a) is determ ined b y the sep a ra tio n betw een
the R e al su b je ct o f se x u a lity and the S y m b o lic O th er o f la w and
la n g u a g e , and it is this sep aratio n th a t is co vered b y the Im a g in a ry
relatio n o f alie n a tio n a n d u n ificatio n . L acan uses this b in a ry o p p o sitio n
b e tw e e n the p rocesses o f alien atio n (conju nction ) and sep a ra tio n (dis
ju n ctio n ) to a rticu la te the d ifferen ce betw een the m aster sign ifier o f
id en tificatio n ( S I, I) and the o b je c t (a):4
Alienation Separation
S I A S a A
Conjunction Disjunction
In the relation o f alien ation, the Su bject (S) form s a union with the
O ther (A) on the ideal level o f identification (I). O p p o se d to this ideal
is the ob ject (a) th at represents a sep aratio n between the su bject and
the O ther.
T h is op p o sitio n betw een sep aration an d alien ation is crucial to any
theory o f the end o f an alysis. F o r certain an alysts claim th at the su bject
m u st identify with the an alyst a t the end o f an alysis, w hile others state
th at there m ust be a m ovem ent beyond identification in a n a ly sis.5
Castration and the End o f Analysis
F or Freud, the central figure o f sex u al identification for both sexes

is the p h allu s, and it is precisely this signifier o f sexu al union which
com es into question at the end o f an an alysis. “ T he p aram o u n t im p o r
tan ce o f these tw o them es— the wish for a penis in w om en , an d , in m en,
the struggle ag ain st passivity— did not escap e the notice o f Ferenczi. In
the p ap er th at he read in 1927 he laid it dow n as a principle th at in
every su ccessfu l an alysis these tw o com plexes m u st have been re
so lv e d .” (Freud 1937, 2 7 0 ) For Freud, the resolution o f this castration
com plex represents the “ b e d ro c k ” o f an alysis and the largest hinder-
ance to the term ination o f an an alysis. “ At no p oin t in o n e ’s analytic
w ork d oes one suffer m ore from the op p ressiv e feeling th at all o n e ’s
effo rts have been in vain an d from the suspicion th at one is ‘talk in g to
the w in d s’ than w hen one is trying to p ersu ad e a fem ale patient to
a b an d o n her wish for a penis on the grou n d s o f it being unrealizable,
o r to convince a m ale patien t th at a p assive attitude to w ard s another
m an d oes n ot alw ays signify castration and th at in m any relations in
life it is in d isp en sab le.” (Freud 1937, 2 7 0 ) T he fem ale dem and fo r a
penis is in reality a final d em and for a phallic form o f identification,
w hile the m asculine fear o f castratio n is b ased on a fear o f being the
p assive o b jec t o f the O ther. In other w ord s, the fem ale d em ands an
identification (SI) w ith the O ther at the end o f an aly sis, w hile the m ale
defen d s ag ain st his sep aration from the O ther.
In the previous m entioned citation , Freud argu es th at there is a form
The O b ject o f the End o f Analysis / 141
of passivity which does not include castration. For Lacan, this passive
attitude w ithout the fear of castration is embodied by the analyst in as
much as the analyst has passed beyond the demand for a phallus and
has been separated from the Symbolic Other.
This separation from the O ther is inscribed in the very structure of
analysis. For at the end of each analytic session, the subject and the
analyst must part. In this sense, at the end of each analytic session and
of each analysis itself, the fundamental question is w hat is the subject
going to do with the lost object. For it is the analyst as object (a) that
the subject loses at the end of his analysis and each time that the
analyst’s presence is left.
Lacan and the Pass Beyond Desire
For Lacan, the way that this relation of loss can be overcome is by
the subject affirming itself to be the object (a) for the Other. The patient
moves from being in the position of a subject of desire, to that of being
the object (a) that causes the desire of the Other. Lacan calls this
reversal of positions, a “traversing of phantasy” and he connects it to
the procedure of the “pass.” For in the pass, the subject must describe
how this movement was made from being the subject of lack to the
affirmation of the presence of the analyst. This movement itself requires
that the subject has “passed” beyond the fear of castration and has
accepted being placed in the position of the passive object which is
without the signifier of phallic identification.
In order to be the object (a), the analyst must give up the desire to
be recognized by the Other and this entails a refusal to identify with
the One who has the phallus. This can only be achieved if the analyst
keeps this desire unknown and undefinable. The subject cannot be let
to believe that the analyst wants something because this demand of the
analyst will most often be interpreted by the subject as a demand for
castration, which places the analyst in the position of a persecuting
superego or paternal Other. “ If the patient puts the analyst in the
position of his father (or mother), he is also giving him the power
which his super-ego exercises over his ego. . . . But at this point a
warning must be given against misusing this new influence. However
much the analyst may be tempted to become a teacher, model and ideal
for other people and to create men in his own image, he should not
forget that it is not his task in the analytic relationship, and indeed that
he will be disloyal to his task if he allows himself to be led on by his
inclinations. If he does, he will only be repeating a mistake of the
parents who crushed their child’s independence by their influence, and

he will only be replacing the patient’s earlier dependence by a new
one.” (Freud 1938, 32). The analyst must refuse to be a parent or a
superego for the patient and instead, must represent a separation from
the subject’s dependence on the ideal and model of the Other.
This need to locate the analyst’s position outside of the Other pushes
Lacan to state that, “ In no case should a psychoanalytic intervention
be theoretical or suggestive, that is to say imperative: it must be equivo
cal. The analytic interpretation is not made to be understood; it is
made to produce waves.” (Lacan 1975, 35, translation mine) Lacan
places the role of the analytic interpretation outside of the Symbolic
demand of the Other (the imperative) and the Imaginary relation of
understanding. In this way, the analyst’s presence remains equivocal
and questioning and continues to stimulate the subject’s desire to know.
The Lack of the Sexual Relation
Freud and Lacan both indicate that one thing that the subject does
not desire to know, but that will be encountered during analysis is the
lack of the sexual relation and the dissatisfaction of the drive. This
occurs when the analyst refuses to satisfy the subject’s demand for love
and understanding from the ideal father-figure. “It almost inevitably
happens that one day his positive attitude towards the analyst changes
over to the negative, hostile one. . . . His obedience to his father . . .
his courting of his father’s favor, had its roots in an erotic wish directed
towards him. Some time or other that demand will press its way
forward in the transference as well and insist on being satisfied. In the
analytic situation it can only meet with frustration. Real sexual rela
tions between patients and analysts are out of the question, and even
subtler methods of satisfaction, such as giving preference, intimacy and
so on, are only sparingly granted by the analyst.” (Freud 1938, 33)
The neutrality and silence of the analyst give presence to the lack of
sexual relation between the subject and the Other.
In this way the subject is forced to face its fundamental feelings of
solitude, which are caused by the presence of the lack of the Other.
However, this confrontation with the analyst as the object (a) can only
occur if the subject has first placed the analyst in the ideal position of
the subject supposed to know. In other words, the positive transference
(the subject supposed to know) must precede the negative transference
(the object which desupposes the knowledge of the Other).
By basing the end of analysis on a separation with the Other, an essen
tial problems occurs. If each subject at the end of analysis makes a separa
The O b ject o f the End o f Analysis / 143
tion with the Other of knowledge and identification, there is no possibil

ity left of an analytic association, or even an analytic knowledge, because
every analyst would remain a separated entity. Lacan attempts to resolve
this problem through his theory of the pass and his articulation of the
analytic discourse. For at the end of analysis, the subject is supposed to
gain a certain knowledge of the object (a) that causes the desire. In fact,
in Lacan’s procedure of the ‘pass’, the way that someone becomes an
analyst of the school is to talk about why one desires to be an analyst.
Instead of talking about other people or patients, the subject in the pass
has to talk about its own analysis. This means that desire must be trans
formed into knowledge. Lacan calls this the transform ation of the work
of tranference to the transference of work.
It is the common work of analytic knowledge that must be produced
at the end of analysis. To illustrate this, Lacan places, in the discourse
of the analyst, knowledge in the position of truth which is located
below the agency of the object. This knowledge (S2) is in turn separated
from the ideal signifier of identification (SI):
_a_-------------------► $
S2---------/ / ----------SI
This brings into question what kind of knowledge is separated from

both the subject ($) of desire and the signifier of identification (SI).
The response of Lacan is that the knowledge of the unconscious is itself
a knowledge without subject, a pure structure of relations and work
which are not dependent on any form of judgement and are detached
from the individual’s personality and consciousness.
Lacan emphasizes this form of social relation, when he states, “ I
expect nothing from individuals, and something from a functioning.”
(Lacan 1980, 131, translation mine). This pure functioning of the
analytic discourse occurs once the subject has given up individual
desires and demands and has affirmed the desire of analysis, which is
a desire to work against repression and to establish a presence of
absolute difference.
The Science of the object (a)
Psychoanalysis itself becomes the science of the object (a) once the
subject realizes that this object represents the limitation of every sci
ence, and causes the emergence of the subject of the unconscious.
Freud points to the logic of a science of the Real when he states
in An Outline o f Psycho-Analysis, that reality is itself unknowable.
“ Reality will always remain ‘unknow able’. The yield brought to light
by scientific work from our primary sense perceptions will consist in
an insight into connections and dependent relations which are present
in the external world, which can somehow be reliably reproduced or
reflected in the internal world of our thought. . . . In this manner we
infer a num ber of processes which are in themselves ‘unknow able’ and
interpolate them in those that are conscious to us. And if, for instance,
we say: ‘At this point an unconscious memory intervened,’ what we
mean is: ‘At this point something occurred of which we are totally
unable to form a conception. . . .” (Freud 1938, 5 3-4) Thus, Freud
affirms that the Real and the unconscious are themselves unknowable
and cannot be Symbolized. However, the science of psychoanalysis
must continue to formulate a logic of relations and connections that
attem pts to circle this unknowablity.
The central relation at the end of analysis is between the unknowable
object (a) and the knowledge (S2) or drive that attem pts to circle this
object. For the object (a) represents a limit to the Symbolic itself, but
a limit th at must be thought of within the Symbolic order of language
and knowledge. Lacan articulates this dialectic between the object and
knowledge as a dialectic between the infinite order of language and the
finitude of the analyst’s desire.
Language itself must be considered infinite in its structure, because
one signifier (SI) always refers to another signifier (S2), which in turn
must refer to another signifier.6 When Lacan uses the symbol S2 to
represent both the signifying chain and knowledge itself, he is pointing
to the set of all of the possible signifiers of the Other. This set must
be infinite, for their can be no final word that serves to define all of
the other words. Rather, the structure of language is circular and
continuous.
This infinitude of language causes a problem for analysis, because
the process of free association could go on forever. That is to say, there
is always another word to say. Therefore, Lacan uses the desire of the
analyst as a finite element within the infinite structure of language. For
in his silence, the analyst represents that which cannot be said and it
is because of the introduction of this limit of language that the subject
gains the possibility of determining the difference between the sayable
and the unsayable.
The Interpretation of the object
In a late text, “ Construction in Analysis,” Freud indicates that this

awareness of the limit of language is evident in the analyst’s interpreta
The O bject o f the End o f Analysis / 145
tions and constructions. “Since every such construction is an incom

plete one, since it covers only a small fragment of the forgotten events,
we are free to suppose that the patient is not in fact disputing w hat has
been said but is basing his contradiction upon the part that has not yet
been discovered.” (Freud 1938a, 279-80) There is a strict correlation
between the incompleteness of the analyst’s interpretation and the
revealed part of the subject’s discourse that has not been revealed. The
Lacanian symbol S(A), which indicates a lack in the Symbolic Other,
can be used to indicate this incompleteness of the interpretation. This
lack refers to the object (a), which is the part of the drive or discourse
that cannot be Symbolized.7
Freud demonstrates this relation between the interpretation and the
object (a) when he indicates that the emergence of an unconscious
element always undermines the subject’s own feeling of self-knowledge.
“ . . . I’ve never thought (or, 1 should never have thought) that (or, of
th at).” This can be translated w ithout any hesitation into: 4Yes, you’re
right this time— about my unconscious’.” (Freud 1938a 280) The un
conscious is a knowledge that does not know itself and can only surface
when it surprises the subject.
The object (a) or the Ego
Furthermore, if the knowledge of analysis itself is to be equal to its

object, this knowledge cannot be reduced to the comfort of a self-
knowledge, but rather it must be related to the discomfort of the object
which is the negation of the ego. Freud points to this when he criticizes
certain trends in analysis. “ . . . the modification of the ego . . . has its
own aetiology and indeed it must be admitted that our knowledge of
these relations is as yet imperfect. They are only just becoming the
object of analytic investigation. I think that here the interest of analysis
is quite wrongly oriented. Instead of inquiring how analysis effects a
cure . . . we should ask w hat are the obstacles which this cure encoun
ters.” (Freud 1937, 238-9) Freud criticizes the concentration on the
psychology of the ego and favors an analysis of the obstacles to the
cure. These obstacles can be symbolized by the object (a) which also
represents the incurable and uninterpretable part of analysis.
This opposition between analysis centered on the modification of
the ego and analysis based on the presence of an obstacle or object (a),
finds its reason in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, where
Freud explains why he does not center his description of neurosis on
the behavior of the ego. “There would be risk of not discovering the
unconscious and at the same time of overlooking the great importance

of the libido and of judging everything as it appears to the ego of the
neurotic subject. It is obvious that this ego is not a trustw orthy or
impartial agency. The ego is indeed the power which disavows the
unconscious and has degraded it into being repressed. . . . ” (Freud
1916, 380) It is only with an analysis of the object that access to the
unconscious and the sexual libido that is repressed by the ego can be
gained. However, the analysis of the object that is favored here is not
the analysis of object relations, which tends to stress the emotional
attributes of empathy and love. Rather it is referring to a non-relation
of the object and serves to undermine the subject’s repressive ego and
allows for the resurfacing of the unconscious libido.
The object and the Structure of the Clinic
The object (a) has been used as the fourth logical element, which is
now added to the three orders of the Real, the Imaginary, and the
Symbolic. This object, which refuses all forms of negation and repres
sion, is opposed to the foreclosures of the psychotic, the repression of
the neurotic, and the denial of the pervert. Rather it represents the
return of the repressed Real beyond the Imaginary order of narcissism
and the Symbolic structure of the death drive.
The fundamental concepts and categories of Freud and Lacan can
now be placed onto a logical square:
(ego) (super ego)
Narcissism - Neuroses - 1, a1 r - - — — - A, Sy - Perversion - Drive
Sexuality - Psychosis - R, S ^ — / / ■— (a), a - analyst - object

(id)
Located in the position of the primitive Real (R) is the unconscious
subject (S) of infantile sexuality which is represented by the id. Psycho
sis is tied to this primary stage of sexuality and to the unconscious,
because all of these states depend on a primordial rejection of the
Symbolic Other. Conversely, located in the position of the Other (A),
are the drive, the superego and the clinical category of perversion,
because these concepts attem pt to define the return of the primary form
of sexuality within the Symbolic (Sy) order of law and language. In
between these two extremes, of the subject of unconscious sexuality
The O bject o f the End o f A nalysis / 147
and the superego of law and regulation, is placed the narcissistic ego
of Imaginary (I) consciousness, which dominates the clinic of neurosis.
Finally, it is shown how the object (a) is differentiated from the other
three categories. This difference in itself defines the position of the
analyst and allows the subject to trace its place within the structure of
the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.
Notes
Notes to the Introduction
1. Lacan’s early definition of the Real in his first seminars centers on the psychotic
rejection o f the Sym bolic Other. “The Other no longer exists. There is a sort of
im m ediate externa] world, o f m anifestations perceived in w hat I will call a primitive
real, a non-sym bolized real. . . (Lacan 1953—4, 58) This connection between the
Real and a hallucinatory perception is echoed throughout the first seminars.
the real, or w hat is perceived as such, is w hat resists sym bolization absolutely. In
the end, d oesn ’t the feeling o f the real reach its high point in the pressing m anifesta
tion o f an unreal, hallucinatory reality.” (Lacan 1953—4, 66—7) Therefore, what
defines the Real is its strict opposition to the Sym bolic order.
2. In the first seminar, there is a good articulation o f the m ovem ent from the Real to
the Imaginary. “ In the beginning, we assume there to be all the ids, objects, instincts,
desires, tendencies, etc. That is reality pure and simple then, which is not delimited
by anything, which cannot yet be the object of any definition, which is neither
good , nor bad, but is all the at the same time chaotic and absolute, primal. . . . and
it is here that the image of the body gives the subject the first form which allow s
him to locate what pertains to the ego and w hat does not. Well then, let us say
that the im age of the body, if we locate it on our schem a, is like the imaginary vase
which contains the bouquet of real flow ers.” (Lacan 1 9 5 3 -4 79) The Imaginary
thus serves to introduce into the Real the ideal form of the body that allow s the
ego to differentiate between self and other.
3. The Sym bolic order is introduced in the first seminar as a step beyond the Real and
the Imaginary mirror stage. “N o w let us postulate that the inclination of the plane
mirror is governed by the voice o f the other. This d oesn ’t happen at the level o f
the mirror-stage, but it happens subsequently through our overall relation with
others— the sym bolic relation. W hat is the sym bolic connection? Dotting our i’s
and crossing our t’s, it is the fact that socially w e define ourselves with the law as
go-b etw een .” (Lacan 1 9 5 3 -4 , 140) Here, Lacan thinks that the relation o f the
Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic in a tem poral logic.
4. Lacan also reads Freud according to the different stages o f his discovery. “Through
ou t the four stages of Freud’s thought that I’ve m entioned— indicated by the
unpublished manuscript w hose com mentary we are n ow bringing to com pletion,
The Interpretation o f Dreams , Ithe constitution o f the theory of narcissism,! and
finally Beyond the Pleasure Principle. . . . ” (Lacan 1 9 5 4 -5 , 1 15) In later texts,
149
Lacan will drop the “Project for a Scientific Psychology” as the first stage of Freud’s
thought and thus his reading o f Freud is congruent to our ow n.
5. There is an articulation of the “schema L” in the Ecrits, 193—4. Here, the subject
is tied to the question of “existen ce,” while the ego is related to the narcissistic
image o f the other and the Other represents the place where the subject poses his
question.
6. Lacan connects the superego to the Sym bolic function of speech throughout his
work. “The super-ego is essentially located within the Symbolic plane of speech. . . .
(Lacan 19 5 3 —4, 102) He repeats this argument in Seminar X L “(What) Freud was
able to define as the ego-ideal or the super-ego, are partial, this is often simply to
give a lateralised view o f what is essentially the relation with the capital Other. ”
(Lacan 1964, 130) The superego can be placed in the position A on the schema L.
7. The relation between Freud’s first topic (unconscious— conscious— preconscious)
and the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, also is found Seminar X i, where
Lacan attaches the unconscious to the Real (p.vii), consciousness to the Imaginary
(p.8 0 -3 ) and the preconscious to the Symbolic order o f language and syntax (p.68).
8. Lacan continuously reads Freud’s topographical structures with a temporal logic.
“ Freud’s schema has changed meaning. He puts the temporal dim ension as such
on the blackboard. . . . This schema, whose general arrangement you can see
remains the same, proves then that Freud is already introducing new dim ensions
into his categories, and in particular a certain logical dim ension.” (Lacan 1 9 5 4 -
5, 1 18) Lacan attempts to locate in Freud’s work a temporal logic that is not purely
developm ental. This same logic serves to determine the relation between Lacan’s
three orders. “The anteriority is n ot chronological, but logical, and here we are
only performing a deduction. It is no less fundamental for all that, since it allow s
us to distinguish between the planes of the sym bolic, the imaginary, and the real. . . .
(Lacan 1 9 5 3 -4 , 170)
9. Lacan’s re-reading his ow n sophism o f logical time can be found in the second
seminar, where the three logical m om ents are related to the Real, the Imaginary,
and the Symbolic. “ 1 am not giving you this as a model of logical reasoning, but
as a sophism , designed to draw out the distinction between language applied to
the Imaginary— for the tw o subjects are perfectly imaginary for the third, he
imagines them, they are quite sim ply the reciprocal structure as such— and the
sym bolic m om ent o f language, that is to say the m om ent of the affirm ation.”
(Lacan 1 9 5 4 -5 , 2 9 0 -1 )
10. Lacan begins a detailed reading of the Project in the second seminar, pp. 93—145.
1 The Dream and the Psychotic Subject
1. On Lacan’s play on the word perversion as pere-version (version of the father), see
the “Seminar of 21 January 1 9 7 5 ,” which is translated in the collection of Feminine
Sexuality. “A father only has the right to respect, if not love, if the said love,
the said respect, is— you w o n ’t believe your ears— perversely (pere-versement)
oriented, that is to say, com e o f a w om an, an object who causes his desire.” (Lacan
1982, 167)
N otes / 151
2. O ne find’s Lacan’s articulation o f Freud’s schema of regression in Seminar I ( 1 9 5 3 -

4, 1 3 7 -4 5 ).
3. The death drive is located in the Symbolic order in several o f Lacan’s texts. For
exam ple in the second seminar, “This is the point where we open into the sym bolic
order, which isn’t the libidinal order in which the ego is inscribed, along with all
the drives. It tends beyond the pleasure principle, beyond the limits of life, and that
is why Freud identifies it with the death in stin c t. . . and the death instinct is only
the mask o f the sym bolic order. . . . ” (Lacan 326) In “Subversion of the Subject
and Dialectic of D esire,” Lacan articulates why he writes the formulae of the death
drive as the connection between the subject and the Symbolic signifying chain. “ . . .
our com plicated graph allow s us to place the drive as the treasure of the signifiers,
its notation ($vD) maintains its structure by linking it with diachrony. It is that
which proceeds from demand when the subject disappears.” (Lacan 1966, 314) It
is the structure of the Sym bolic order that transcends the subject in the drive.
4. Lacan integrates H egel’s theory of the sym bol into his reading o f Freud’s fort/da
game and the clinical category of m asochism . “Because it is in so far as the symbol
allow s this inversion, that is to say cancels the existing thing, that it opens up the
world o f negativity, which constitutes both the discourse o f the human subject and
the reality o f his world in so far as it is human. Primal m asochism should be located
around the initial negativation, around this original murder o f the thin g.” (Lacan
1 9 5 3 -4 , 174) In the third part of the text, this relation between language, death,
and perversion returns.
5. In “Subversion of the Subject and Dialectic of D esire,” Lacan indicates that the
Other does not exist. . why should he sacrifice his difference to the jouissance
o f an Other, which, let us remember, does not ex ist.” (Lacan 1966, 323) In his
later seminars, Lacan will insist that jouissance exists, but the Other does not.
6. Lacan’s reading of this dream can be found in the first part o f Seminar XI (1964)
in particular pp. 34, 5 7 - 9 , and 6 9 - 7 0 .
7. The tem porality of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic is determined by the
fact that the Symbolic order preexists the entry of the subject, and that the ego in
the Imaginary must always anticipate the image of the other as his ow n perfect
body-im age.
8. Lacan’s early description o f the difference between condensation and displacem ent
is located in “The Agency of the Letter in the U nconscious.” “ . . . ‘condensation’
is the structure of the superim position of the signifiers, which m etaphor takes as
its field. . . . In the case of Verschiebung, displacem ent, which is the German term,
is closer to the idea of that veering off of signification that we see in m etonym y,
and which from its first appearance in Freud is represented as the m ost appropriate
means used by the unconscious to foil censorship. ” (Lacan 1966, 160) Lacan
equates condensation with metaphor, and displacem ent with metonym y.
9. Lacan directly relates the metonym y of displacem ent to the signifying chain. “ . . .
the m etonym ic structure, indicating that it is the connection between signifier and
signifier. . . . ” (Lacan 1966, 164) Likewise, the m etaphoric trope o f condensation
is im plicated in the substitution o f signifiers. “ . . . the m etaphoric structure indicat
ing that it is in the substitution of signifiers that an effect of signification is
produced. . . . ” (Lacan 1966, 160)
10. In Lacan’s Seminar I (1 9 5 3 -4 ) there are rwo cases of psychosis that are introduced
in order to help explain his concept of the primitive Real. The first cast is M elanie
Klien’s case o f little Dick (pp. 63, 6 8 - 7 0 ,7 3 , 1 8 1 -8 ), and the second case is Robert,
presented by Rosine Lefort (pp. 9 1 - 1 0 2 , 105).
2 Sexuality and the Unconscious
1. Lacan’s reading o f the three stages o f sexual developm ent can be found in several
places in Seminar XI, pp. 64, 100—104, and 190—191 as well as in several unpub
lished seminars.
2. To refer to Lacan’s theory of the phallus as it relates to the signifier o f sexuality,
see “The Signification of the Phallus” (Lacan, 1966, 2 8 1 -2 9 1 )
3. Lacan articulates the relation between the phallus and the genital stage in the
follow ing manner: “ You will have noticed already that it is on the right, in the
field o f the Other, that the genital drive has to find its form. . . . The genital drive
is subjected to the circulation of the O edipus com plex, to the elementary and other
structures of kinship.” (Lacan 1964, 189) In short, the Sym bolic order of social
relations and regulations defines the genital drive. This stage of sexuality is totally
determ ined by the cultural and historical setting.
4. This opposition between the jouissance o f the One and the jouissance of the Other
is central to Lacan’s later seminars. This dialectic is presented in the last three
chapters o f the Feminine Sexuality collection. (Lacan 1982, 1 3 8 -1 7 0 )
5. In “Subversion o f the Subject and Dialectic of D esire,” Lacan describes how the
neurotic refuses the O ther’s desire. “. . . the obsessional in as much as he denies
the desire of the Other in forming his phantasy by accentuating the im possibility
o f the subject vanishing . . .” (Lacan 1966, 321)
3 Consciousness and Narcissism
1. For Lacan's own introduction to narcissism , see “The Mirror Stage,” and “Aggres-
sivity in Psychoanalysis” in the Ecrits (Lacan 1966, 1 -7 , 8—29)
2. In Seminar I there are also three chapters on narcissism. (Lacan 1 9 5 3 -4 1 0 7 -4 2 )
3. W hile this is not the place to exam ine the relation between Lacan and Sartre, it
should be pointed out that Lacan does introduce his discussion of perversion and
the Sym bolic order in Seminar I in connection to his reading of Sartre. (Lacan
1953—4, 2 1 5 —9 and 224). In this same seminar, however, Lacan criticizes Sartre
for not taking into account the triadic nature of all Symbolic intersubjectivity. “ If
you read the book of Sartre’s I was referring to the other day, you will see that he
allow s som ething extrem ely disturbing to emerge. Having defined the intersubjec-
tive relation so clearly, he seems to imply that, if there is a plurality in this world
o f imaginary inter-relations, the plurality is not enumerable, in so far as each of
the subjects is by definition the unique center of reference. This holds if one remains
on the phenom enological plane o f the analysis of the in-itself and the for-itself. But
its consequence is that Sartre does not perceive that the intersubjective field cannot
N otes / 153
but open on to a numerical structuration, on to the three, the four, which are our
bench-marks in the analytic experience. Primitive as it is, the sym bolism brings us
im m ediately on the plane o f language, in so far as, outside o f that, there is no
enum eration conceivable.” (Lacan 1 9 5 3 -4 , 224) Lacan criticizes Sartre for devel
oping an Imaginary phenom enology of dual relations (the in-itself and the for-
itself) w ithout articulating a structural theory of Sym bolic intersubjectivity.
4. Lacan relates the im possibility of desire to the obsessional, and the dissatisfaction
to the hysteric in several places, including “The Direction of Treatm ent and Princi
ples o f its Pow er.” (Lacan 1966, 2 6 7 - 9 ) and “Subversion of the Subject and
Dialectic o f D esire.” (Lacan 1966, 321)
5. Already in “Subversion o f the Subject,” Lacan indicates that the object is w ithout
a specular image. “It is to this object which cannot be grasped in the mirror that
the specular image lends its cloth es.” (Lacan 1966, 316)
6. A constant them e in Lacan’s handling of the castration com plex is its relation to
a threat o f bodily harm or fragmentation. See “The Signification of the Phallus.”
(Lacan 1966, 2 8 3 -9 1 )
Chapter 4 The Logic of Totem and Taboo
1. In the second seminar, Lacan ascribes the category of exogam y to the Symbolic
order itself. “There is no biological reason, and in particular no genetic one, to
account for exogam y. . . . In the human order, we are dealing with the com plete
em ergence o f a new function encom passing the w hole order in its entirety. . . . The
human order is characterized by the fact that the sym bolic function intervenes at
every m om ent and at every stage of its existen ce.” (Lacan 1954—5 ,2 9 ) This human
order of exogam y is not only Sym bolic, but it is also universal. “ In the sym bolic
order the totality is called a universe. The sym bolic order from the first takes on
its universal character.” (Lacan 1954—5, 29) The Symbolic function o f exogam y is
placed in the position of the universal signifier o f the Other.
2. A partial sam pling o f Lacan’s theory of the logic of sexual quantification is found
in the section o f Seminar X X that is translated in Feminine Sexuality (Lacan 1982,
1 4 9 -6 0 ) and in Television. (Lacan 1974, 44) On the explicit connection between
this logic and the question of castration and incest, the unpublished seminar, “. . .
ou pire,” m ust be studied. Furthermore, if it is assumed that exogam y represents
the universal Sym bolic order of language and law, it can be affirmed that incest is
directly opposed to exogam y, in the same way that the Real subject is opposed to
the Sym bolic Other. H owever, even if incest is outlaw ed by the Other, there is part
o f this form o f infantile sexuality which remains in the unconscious of the subject.
This part has been connected to the object (a) as it is represented by the tabooed
object o f desire. This object is placed in opposition to the named object o f the
totem .
3. In Seminar XI, Lacan defines the Real as im possible (Lacan 1964, 167) If the Real
is im possible and in opposition to the Sym bolic Other, it can be inferred that the
Sym bolic is possible. Also in Seminar X i, the object (a), in the position of the gaze,
is related to the logical category o f the contingent in the logic of castration. “The
gaze is presented to us only in the form of a strange contingency, sym bolic of what
w e may find on the horizon, as the thrust o f our experience, namely, the lack that
constitutes castration anxiety.” (Lacan 1964, 72—3).
4. This opposition between the object (a) and the field of consciousness is best
presented through Lacan’s analysis of the gaze in Seminar X7, pp. 6 7 - 1 1 9 .
5. Lacan rethinks the relation of animism (or m agic), religion, and science throughout
Seminar XI and in the chapter of his Ecrits “Science and Truth.”
6. In the first seminar, Lacan dem onstrates why the neurotic must be tied to the
Imaginary order and the psychotic to the return in the Real o f the foreclosed Other.
“W hat is crucial for Freud is grasping the difference in structure which exists
between the withdrawal from reality which w e observe in the neuroses and that
which w e observe in the psychoses. . . . In the refusal to recognize, in the refusal,
in the barrier opposed to reality by the neurotic, we note a recourse to fancy. Here
w e have function, which in Freud’s vocabulary can only refer to the imaginary
order. . . . (Lacan 1 9 5 3 -4 , 116)
7. Lacan articulates the difference between the statement and the enunciation in
Seminar X7, pp. 1 3 8 -4 1 .
5 Beyond the Pleasure Principle
1. This writing of the drive is articulated in “Subversion of the Subject.” (Lacan 1966,
314)
2. In Seminar X7, Lacan explains why the object represents an elem ent of dissatisfac
tion within the structure of the drive. “The object petit a is not at the origin of the
oral drive. It is not introduced as the original food, it is introduced from the fact
that no food will ever satisfy the oral drive, except by circum venting the eternally
lacking object.” (Lacan 1964, 180)
3. I use Lacan’s discourse o f the master here because it represents the essential
structure o f language, which is dom inant in Lacan’s conception of the drive.
4. Lacan attem pts to read these oppositions in a logical order in the Seminar XI 1964,
190.
5. Lacan argues that for Freud, the love relation can only com e into being once the
third opposition between activity and passivity is established. “It is there, then,
that Freud intends to set up the bases of love. It is only with activity/passivity that
the sexual relation com es into play.” (Lacan 1964, 192) Furthermore, Lacan adds
that this opposition between activity and passivity is a perverse relation. “O f
course, it is well known that the activity/passivity opposition may account for
many things in the dom ain of love. But w hat we are dealing with here is precisely
this injection, one might say, of sado-m asochism . . . . (Lacan 1964, 192) Lacan
replaces the equations, masculine = activity / feminine - passivity, with sadism -
activity / m asochism = passivity.
6. Already in his reading o f Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in the Seminar /, Lacan
connects the structure of perversion to the general structure of intersubjectivity.
“The w hole phenom enon is thus reduced to that level of intersubjectivity w hose
m anifestations w e connote, provisionally, as perverse.” (Lacan 1953—4, 216)
N otes / 155
7. Lacan’s ow n theory o f hypnosis is presented at the end of Seminar XL “To define

hypnosis as the confusion, at one point, o f the ideal signifier in which the subject
is mapped with the ‘a ,’ is the m ost assured structural definition that has been
advanced.” (Lacan 1 9 6 4 ,2 7 3 ).
8. “ It is in as much as the analyst’s desire, which remains an x, tends in a direction
that is the exact opposite o f identification, that the crossing o f the plane o f desire
is possible. . . . ” (Lacan 1964, 274).
6 The Object of the End of Analysis
1. There is very little about the pass in Lacan’s translated works. One finds a brief
passage in the preface to Seminar X L (Lacan 1964, viii-ix)
2. Lacan’s criticism o f ego psychology is found throughout his work, but is directly
related to the question of time in “The Function and Field o f Speech and Language
in Psychoanalysis.” (Lacan 1966, pp. 9 5 -1 0 6 )
3. Lacan refer’s to this change in Freud’s technique in the follow ing passage. “The
fixing in advance of a termination o f an analysis, a form of active intervention,
inaugurated (pro pudor!) by Freud himself. . . .” (Lacan 1966, 96) W hile Lacan
criticizes Freud for setting a fixed date to the end of the W olfm an’s analysis, he
does praise Freud for introducing the question of time as a variable in analysis.
4. The logic o f separation and alienation is articulated in the Seminar X i, pp. 188.
2 0 3 - 2 1 , 2 2 5 , 2 3 5 , 2 3 9 , 2 4 1 - 2 , 2 4 6 , 2 5 2 - 3 , 2 5 7 - 8 , 2 6 4 , 266.
5. Lacan traces this m ovem ent beyond identification in the last tw o chapters of
Seminar X L in particular pp. 2 6 7 - 7 6 .
6. This dialectic between the infinitude of language and the finitude o f the analyst is
played out in the follow ing passage. . the m ediation of this infinity of the subject
with the finiteness o f desire. . . .” (Lacan 1964, 252)
7. Lacan’s Television is centered on this question o f the lack o f the Other and the
lack in the Other as it relates to the structure o f language and the interpretation
o f the analyst. In fact, this text begins by introducing the lim it of language and
therefore all interpretations. “ 1 always speak the w hole truth. N o t the w hole truth,
because there’s no way to say it all. Saying it all is literally im possible: words fail.”
(Lacan 1974, p. 1)
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Peirce, C.S. Philosophical Writings o f Peirce. N ew York: Dover Publications, 1955.
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Index
Activity/Passivity, opposition of, 6 2 -6 3 , 7 3 -7 4 , 7 6 -7 7 , 100, 111;

111-112, 121, 154 n.5 phenomenology of 2 -1 0 , 17-19,
Adler, Alfred, 70 62-6 3
Aim, of Drive, 108-110 Construction, 84
Alienation, 121, 139-140, 155 n.4
Ambivalence, 18, 85—87, 90—91,
100 Death, concept of, 98
Anal stage, 48-51 (def) Death drive, 44, 107-131; as myth
Animism, 95—97, 99, 154 n.5 16; and neurosis 90; and science
Anthropology, 2 7 -2 8 , 75, 78 96; and the Symbolic order 5 -7 ,
Anxiety, 42, 69, 116, 124, 127-128 2 1 -2 2 , 3 3 -3 4 , 42, 77, 151 n.3
Appel, Karl O tto, 3 -4 Debasement, 126-127
Arpad, Freud’s case of 93—94 Delusions, 36, 3 7 -3 8 , 41
Autoerotism, 6, 8, 18, 31, 34, 44, Demand, 20, 4 8 -5 1 , 68, 89, 107-
47(def), 49, 5 9 -6 0 , 62, 6 4-65, 108
9 6 -9 7 Denial, 126
Derrida, Jacques, 85
Being-in-itself 2, 9, 55, 64-65 Descartes, Rene, 3,5, 13
Being-for-itself 2, 18, 55, 64-65 Desire, 34, 60, 109-1 10; of the ana
Being-for-Others 2, 41, 55, 64-66, lyst 73, 136, 141-144, 155 n.8;
81 and hallucination 20, 40; and
Bleuler, E., 60 jouissance 48; of the O ther 2 8 -
Borderline Personalities, 126-127 29, 6 7 -6 8 , 114-115
Developmental theory, 4 -5 , 28, 44,
Castration Complex, 73, 153 n.6; 52, 59, 62, 69, 75, 9 6 -9 7 , 114,
and the end of analysis 131, 138, 129-130, 150 n.8, 152 n.2
140; logic of the 8 0 -8 1 ; and Oe Dialectics, 45, 6 7 -6 8
dipus Complex 27, 55, 93—94; in Discourse of the Analyst, 138-143
perversion 22; and the phallus Discourse of the Hysteric, 88—89
2 9 -3 0 , 6 9 -7 0 , 119; in psychosis, Discourse of the M aster 21, 45, 82—
42, 99 83, 110, 115, 119, 130-131, 154
Condensation, 3 6 -3 7 (def), 3 8 -3 9 , n.3
151 n.8 Displacement, 3 6 -3 7 (def), 3 8 -3 9 ,
Consciousness, 23, 35, 65, 85, 87, 151 nn.8—9
150 n.7; as a defense against anxi Dream state, 20, 31, 32, 3 4 -4 0 , 43,
ety 128; Freud’s theory of 16-17, 47
38; and narcissism 13, 17-19, Drive (see Death drive)
161
162 / B etween Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
Ego 2 -5 , 7 -1 4 , 23, 5 0 -5 1 , 74, 39, 43, 44, 48, 76, 149 n.3; Intro
145—146; and consciousness 17- du ctory Lectures on Psychoanaly
19, 6 2 -6 3 , 85; defenses of 15, sis, 6, 31, 75, 145-146; “On N ar
6 6 -6 7 ; and hypnosis 122-123; cissism: an Introduction,” 6, 18,
and neurosis 59; 4 1 -4 2 , 5 9 -7 4 , 76, 100; “N ega
Ego-ideal (ideal of the ego), 50, 59, tion,” 101; “ Notes upon a Case
67, 7 0 -7 1 , 91, 93, 100, 123 of Obsessional N eurosis” (The
Ego psychology, 1, 135-136, 145- Ratman case), 86—88; An O utline
146, 155 n.2, o f Psychoanalysis, 143-144;
Epistemology, 3—5 “ Project for a Scientific Psychol
Exhibitionism, 113-114 ogy,” 4, 10, 14-23, 149-150 n.3,
Existentialism, 1—8, 12, 46 150 n. 10; “Psychoanalytic Notes
Exogamy, 7 8 -7 9 , 8 2 -8 2 , 153 n. 1 on an Autobiographical Account
of a Case of Paranoia” (The
Fantasy, 20, 28, 5 9 -6 1 , 6 3 -6 4 , 68, Schreber case), 3 5 -3 6 , 39, 42,
101, 116-117, 123 64, 76, 99; Three Essays on the
Father, role of, 102; in castration T heory o f Sexuality, 5—6, 44—55,
69—70, 73; in perversion 22; in 76; T otem and T aboo, 6, 28, 75—
psychosis 99; in the Oedipus 86, 90-1 0 3
Complex 23, 2 7 -3 1 , 52, 55, 8 1 -
82, 9 2 -9 4 , 130 Gangs, 92 -9 3
Feminine Sexuality 52—53, 67 -6 9 Gestalt, 17
Ferenczi, Sandor, 93 Genital Zone, 5 2 -5 3 , 152 n.3
Fetishism, 20 Greimas, A., 78—79
Fixation, 76 (def), 83—84, 1 10 Guilt, 91, 95, 117
Fort/Da game 119-121, 151 n.4
Foreclosure (Verwerfung), 27, 30, Hallucination, 19, 36, 38—43, 47—
34, 36, 4 1 -4 3 , 47, 60, 66, 9 7 - 48, 68, 9 7 -9 9 , 149 n .l
100, 112, 116 H artm ann, Heinz, 135
Foucault, Michel, 122 Heidegger, M artin, 5, 33, 98
Free association, 144 Hegel, G.W.F., 13, 33, 45, 114,
Freud, Sigmund, 1,4, 6, 73; “ Analy 151 n.4
sis Terminable and Interminable,” History, stages of, 9 5 -9 7
135-142; B eyond the Pleasure Homosexuality, 36, 42
Principle, 5 -6 , 34, 77, 118-121, Hostility, 9 8 -1 0 0
126-128, 130-131, 149 n.3; “A Husserl, Edmund, 17, 63
Child is Being Beaten,” 115-117; H ypochondria, 6 5 -6 6
“Constructions in Analysis,” Hypnosis, 54, 7 2 -7 3 , 122-125,
144-145; The Ego an d the Id, 130-131, 155 n.7
129—130; “ Fragment of an Analy Hysteria, 60, 68, 8 7 -8 9 , 101, 116
sis of a Case of H ysteria” (The
D ora case), 87; “ From the His id, 3, 7 -1 0 , 12, 14-15, 129, desire
tory of an Infantile N eurosis” and 153 n.4
(The W olfman case), 99, 136- Idealization (see Overvaluation of
137; G roup Psychology and the object)
A nalysis o f the E go, 88, 122— Ideal ego (see Imaginary other)
125; “ Instincts and their Vicissi Identification, 88—89, 9 3 -9 4 , 137—
tudes,” 90, 107-114; The Inter 140
pretation o f D reams, 6, 27, 32— Imaginary, the 1—14, and conscious
Index / 163
ness 17-19, 35, 85, 100-101; and Neurosis 92; and the Oedi
and narcissism 17-20, 6 2 -6 3 ; in pus Complex 2 1 -2 3 , 2 7 -3 0 , 52,
neurosis 22, 60, 100-101; 54, 78, 95; and Psychosis 60
traum a 116; and the Real 149 Lefort, Rosine, 152 n. 10
n.2 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 78
Imaginary other (ideal image), 2, 7— Libido, theory of, 60, 62, 64, 146
8, 11, 13, 17-19, 4 9 -5 1 , 62-6 3 , Linguistics 3 -5 , 13, 16, 21 (see Lan
71, 84, 100, 111, 113, 149 n.2 guage)
Impetus (of Drive), 108, 110-111 Loewenstein, R., 135
Incest (taboo), 27—28, 30, 32, 51 — Logical quantifiers, 7 9 -8 2 , 99
52, 7 7 -7 8 , 82, 95 Logical square, 7 9 -8 2 , 111-112,
Inhibition, 15, 44, 6 6 -6 7 , 118 146
Infantile sexuality, 5 -6 , 7, 12, 3 1 - Logical time (see Lacan “ Logical
32, 4 0 -4 1 , 44, 4 5 -5 2 , 76, 108 Time . . .” )
Instinct, 3, 107 Love, state of being in, 122-125
Intentionality, 2 -4 , 18, 21, 35, 4 8 -
49, 63, 111 Masochism, 72, 115-117, 151 n.4
Interdiction, 78 M asturbation, 53—54
Interpretation, 136, 142, 144-145, Master-Slave dialectic, 114
155 n.7 Memory, 4, 14-16, 32, 35
M irror stage, 12-13, 17 (def), 6 2 -
Jouissance, 31, 47—48, 54, 83, 108, 63, 71, 73, 9 6 -9 7 , 149 n.2
152 n.4 M other, role of, 18-19, 22, 23, 2 7 -
Judgement, 11-14, 19-20 2 8 ,5 0 -5 1
Kant, Immanuel, 3, 63 Name-of-the-Father, 27, 3 0 -3 1 ,

Kernberg, O tto, 126 4 1 -4 2 , 78, 8 1 -8 2 , 116
Kinship, 78 Narcissism, 2, 5 -8 , 5 9 -6 0 , 6 2 -6 8 ,
Klein, Melanie, 84, 152 n. 10 73—73, 112; and the anal stage
Kohut, Heinz, 73 4 9 -5 1 ; and consciousness 17-19,
Kraeplin, Emil, 60 6 2 -6 5 , 7 3 -7 4 , 76, 100; and la
Kris, Ernst, 135 tency 44; Lacan’s theory of 9 6 -
97, 152 n n .1 -2 ; and the Oedipus
Lacan, Jacques, 1, 2, 55, 139-141; Complex 22, 23, 117
Paranoid Psychosis and its Rela Narcissistic personality, 12, 51, 73
tion to Personality 2 -3 ; “ Logical Negation 20, 80, 101
Time and the Assertion of Antici Neurosis 20, 22, 55, 100-101; and
pated C ertitude,” 6 -8 , 10-14, ambivalence 86, 91; in analysis
19, 20, 2 2 - 2 3 ,3 5 , 103, 150 7 2 -7 3 ; and desire 68, 9 0 -9 2 ;
nn.8—9; “ M irror Stage as Forma compared to perversion 5 3 -5 4 ;
tive of the Function of the I . . . compared to psychosis 51, 59—
62 -6 3 61, 64
Language, 2, 4, 6 -7 , 10, 21, 144; Nine 1/2 W eeks , 124-125, 128
and the death drive 3 3 -3 5 ; and Nothingness, 7 3 -7 4
desire 115; and love 66; and
memory 16; and psychosis 31; object (a) 7; and the drive 101,
and the unconscious 77 109-112, 154 n.2; and the gaze
Latency 44, 45-51 154 n.4; in hypnosis 122-124;
Law, 6—10, 13—14; and desire 122; and jouissance 48, 8 3 -8 4 ; op-
posed to the Imaginary 13, 68, Preconscious, 9 -1 0 , 32, 33, 38, 150
73 -7 4 , 153 n.5; in neurosis 89— n.7
90; and the presence of the ana Primal father (see Primal hord)
lyst 23, 7 3 -7 4 , 127, 136-146; Primal hord 30, 7 5 -7 6 , 94—95, 102
and the Real 8 3-84; and the ta Projection, 36, 3 8 -3 9 , 41, 9 7 -1 0 0
boo 84-85 Prescription, 78
Object-choice (object-love) 45—46, Psychosis 20, 22, 27, 3 0 -3 1 , 3 5 -
51 -5 2 , 61, 64 -6 7 , 96, 114 36, 3 9 -4 3 , 55, 66, 152 n.10; and
Object Relations 146 animism 97—100; and infantile
Obsessional neurosis 20, 60, 68, sexuality 47, 59, 64; compared to
85 -9 1 , 100, 1 12, 136-137, de neurosis 51, 6 0 -6 1 , 68
sire and 152 n.5, 153 n.4 Puberty 4 4 -4 7 , 52 (def), 114
Oedipus Complex 22, 2 7 -2 8 , 30,
5 1 -5 2 , 54, 69, 75, 88, 90, 9 3 - Rank, O tto 135
95, 97, 116, 118, 129-130 Real, 1-11, 22, 76; and the Imagi
Ontology 3—5, 65 nary 149 n.2; as impossible 81,
Oral Stage 47 (def), 49-51 153 n.3; and infantile sexuality
O ther 1, 7, 8 (defined), 9, 10, 13, 44, 47, 66, 76, 110; and percep
68; and love 66; and the Oedipus tion 14-15, 16-17, 3 2 -3 4 ; and
Complex 27—28; in perversion psychosis 27, 41, 43, 149 n .l,
102, 113-115; in psychosis 31, 152 n . l 0; opposed to the Sym
42, 5 3 -5 4 , 60, 99; and sexuality bolic 34, 79, 81; as unknow able
2 1 -2 2 , 34 143-144
Overvaluation of the object, 54, 68, Reality Principle, 55, 60, 66, 97,
72, 122-123 118, 121
Reflex action 15,
Regression, 32 (def), 3 4 -3 6 , 3 8 -4 2 ,
Paranoia, 41, 59, 6 3-64, 97 151 n.2
Pass, the, 141-143, 155 n.l Rejection, (see foreclosure)
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 8 -9 Religion, 9 5 -9 7 , 100, 151 n.5
Perception, 2, 4, 7, 10-11, 14, 16, Repetition compulsion, 126, 128,
32 -3 4 , 3 9 -4 1 , 97 130
Perversion, 20, 46, 64, 68, 112- Repression, 1, 44, 7 6 -7 7
118, 122-130; compared to neu Resistance, 15, 138
rosis 53—54, 59—61; and hypnosis Return of the repressed, 77, 101,
72 -7 3 , 122-126; and intersubjec 120, 129
tivity 154 n.6; and the role of the Rimbaud, Arthur, 13
father 22, 29, 5 4 -5 5 , 70, 9 3-94,
101-102, 150 n.l Sade, Marquis de 122
Phallus, 13—14, 27; and castration Sadomasochism, 22, 5 4 -5 5 , 70, 73,
29—31, 69, 80, 140; Lacan’s the 91, 93, 101-102, 112-115, 1 24-
ory of 152 n n .2 -3 ; and perver 131, 154 n.5
sion 20—21; and sexual difference Sartre, Jean-Paul, 2, 9, 6 5 -6 6 , 110,
4 4 -4 6 , 5 2 -5 3 114-115, 152-153 n.3, 154 n.6
Phenomenology, 1-6, 10, 17-18, Saussure, Ferdinand de, 16
23, 62-63 Schema L, 7 -8 , 12, 28, 46, 49, 61,
Plato, 3 6 4-65, 71, 74, 80, 82, 110, 139,
Pleasure Principle, 17, 55, 66, 111, 150 n.5
118, 121 Schema of hypnosis, 123
Index / 165
Schema of Mental apparatus, 3 2 - Subject supposed to know, the, 73,

33, 3 8 -4 1 , 151 n.2 127, 142
Schizophrenia, 59, 60-61 Sublimation, 84
Schreber (see Freud “ Psychoanalytic Super-ego, the, 3, 7 -1 0 , 14, 150
Notes . . .” ) n.6; and the Oedipus Complex
Science, 16, 9 5 -9 7 , 143-144, 151 2 7 -2 8 , 30, 52, 129-130; in per
n.5 version 22, 54, 101-102, 124—
Seduction, Theory of, 1 16-1 17 125; in psychosis 41—42
Separation, 72, 139-143, 155 n.4 Symbolic, the, 1-12, 14, 23; the ac
Set theory, 118, 139—140 quisition of 119—120; and the
Semiotic square, 7 8 -7 9 death drive 3 3 -3 5 , 77, 81, 96;
Sexual development (see Develop and desire 115; Lacan’s introduc
mental theory) tion of 149 n.3; and love 66, 72;
Sexual difference, 27, 29, 4 4 -4 6 , and the Oedipus Complex 2 7 -3 0 ,
52, 6 8 -6 9 , 111, 115 81; in psychosis 42—43; and the
Sexual Quantifiers, 8 0 -8 2 , 99, 153 Real 83—84, 149 n. l ; and science
n.2 96; and sexuality 19-22; and the
Short sessions 136—137 totem 7 7 -7 9
Signifier, the (SI) 21 -2 2 , in dream- Symptom-formation, 45 (def), 53—
work 3 6 -3 7 , 3 8 -3 9 ; and the 54, 7 6 -7 7 , 8 5 -8 9
phallus 45, 53, 1 19; and sexual
difference 45; and symptom for Taboo, 8 4 -8 5 , 95
m ation 53, 89; and the totem Tem porality, 35, 151 n.7
82-83 Termination of analysis, 23, 72—73,
Signifying chain, the (S2), 16, 2 1 - 138-143
22 (defined), 29, 31, 144; and the Totemism, 78, 8 2 -8 3 , 90, 9 2 -9 4
desire of the O ther 89; and Touching phobia, 8 5 -8 6
dream -w ork 36—37, 3 8 -3 9 ; and Transference, 23, 73, 126-127,
exogamy 82—83; and memory 142-143
3 2 -3 3 ; and metonymy 151 n.9;
and sexual difference 45, 53, 119 Unconscious, the, 9, 12; and infan
Silence of the analyst, the 142 tile sexuality 5, 6, 44; and knowl
Socrates, 109 edge 143-145; and language 16,
Source, of the drive, 107—108, 110— 77; and neurosis 87; and psycho
111 sis 20, 27, 40—43; and the Real
Splitting of the subject, 87, 101, 3 2 -3 3 , 4 0 -4 3 , 76, 150 n.7
126
Structuralism, 1, 3 -6 , 15, 21 -2 2 , Voyeurism, 113
99
Subject, the 1-8, 11-13, 21, 28, 47, Wish-fulfillment, 35, 40—41 (def),
114, 120-121 43

Robert Samuels - Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis - Lacan's Reconstruction of Freud-Routledge (1993)

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Robert Samuels - Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis - Lacan's Reconstruction of Freud-Routledge (1993)

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ROUTLEDGE New York and London

Published in Great Britain by

Copyright © 1993 by Routledge, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America on acid free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

Samuels, Robert, 1961 —

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data also available.

Introduction: From Freud’s Project to L a c a n ’s Logic 1

The Existence o f the Real

2 Sexuality an d the U ncon scious 44

The Phenomenology o f the Imaginary

4 T he L ogic o f Totem and T aboo 75

The Structure o f the Symbolic

The Logic o f the Object (a)

Existentialism, Phenomenology, and Structuralism in Analysis

Existentialism refers to the sensual existence of the isolated subject

language, and without the ability to communicate. On this level of

On the primary level of the Real, the biographical development of

The Ternary Structure of Freud’s Thought

These three dimensions of sensual experience (existential), individual

objects, to the knowing subject or ego. Questions of consciousness and

I would like to call Real natural objects and experiences. Existence is

concept of narcissism, can be connected to the text of 1914 entitled

From the Project of Freud to the Logic of Lacan

The reading of Freud’s work presented here will not be simply

On this d iag ram , L acan attem pts to develop a logic o r algebra o f

representation of an ego there is a corresponding imaginary represen­

The Philosophy of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic

Peirce argues that there is a primary level of existence that consists

of aught else. . . . The idea of First is predominant in the ideas of

unconscious must be thought of on the level of Firstness, consciousness

A prison warden has three select prisoners summoned and an­

upon logical and not simply probablistic reasons. Keeping this in

subjects are taken in the Imaginary relation of reciprocity and reflection

This definition of the ego as nothing helps to anticipate Lacan’s later

is the signifier of masculine sexuality. Thus, in the first logical time,

Perception, Consciousness and Memory

excitation, which he connotes with the symbol “Q n” (the quantity of

these passages of stimulation “facilitations” or “traces” and he adds

quantitative relation and his notion of consciousness, which introduces

The Phenomenology of the Ego and of Consciousness

Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage will be used in order to determine

69) For Husserl, consciousness is dependent on the generation of a

The Structure of Judgment and Difference

In Freud’s Project, this concept of judgement intervenes in a third

Perversion, Drive, and Discourse

in a second logical time, attempts to establish the stability of its ego

The object (a) and the Position of the Analyst

The Dream and the Psychotic Subject

Freud’s Interpretation o f Dreams not only attempts to prove the

The Structure of the Oedipus Complex

According to Freud and Lacan, the sexuality of every subject is

defining element between nature and culture. The difference between

child, S a', mother

The Function of Perversion

is the phallus. However, since there is only one signifier of sexuality

In psychoses, it is precisely this function of the Name-of-the-father,

to be the foreclosure of the signifier. To the point at which the Name-

Pet Mnem Mnem' Ucs Pcs

Pet Mnen Mnen'

theory of the death drive, as it is articulated in Beyond the Pleasure

The Anxiety of Death in the Real

representation of an ego there is a corresponding imaginary represen

A prison warden has three select prisoners summoned and an

the Other is dominated by the ideal forms of narcissistic representa

In the third section of Freud’s text on narcissism, the dialectic be