Identification

All occurrences

Where it appears in the corpus (753)

1. #01

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.87

   From the Logic of Illusion to the Postulates > 'Person also means mask'

   Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that Kant's paralogism of personality and its resolution through the transcendental idea structurally anticipates Lacan's optical schema and the concept of the Ego-Ideal as 'the way I see the Other seeing me', showing that the unity of the subject-as-person is an inevitable dialectical illusion produced by identification with a virtual point of view that already marks the subject's division by the Other.

   The possibility of such a perspective opens up only with the concept of the regulative idea that constitutes precisely the virtual point of view with which the subject identifies in order to perceive this 'unity'.

2. #02

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.120

   The Act and Evil in Literature > The case of Valmont

   Theoretical move: The passage uses the literary case of Valmont and Merteuil in *Les Liaisons dangereuses* to dramatize the Lacanian thesis that there is no sexual relation — that love (identification, the formula of One) and jouissance (always partial, never whole) are fundamentally incompatible — while also arguing that the path to autonomous subjectivity, in eighteenth-century ethical thought, runs through Evil as a deliberate project rather than mere knowledge.

   love has to do with identification, and thus functions according to the formula 'we are one'.

3. #03

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.144

   The Act and Evil in Literature > The case of Valmont > The case of Don Juan

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that Don Juan's serial seduction is not about variety but about repetition compulsion aimed at extracting Woman-as-such beyond her symbolic roles — a structural impossibility (since 'Woman doesn't exist') whose failure produces the myth's composite shape and reveals that patriarchal society is itself a reaction-formation to the non-existence of Woman, not its cause.

   These identities make it obvious not only that Woman does indeed exist, but also what she is: the 'common denominator' of all these symbolic roles, the substance underlying all these symbolic attributes.

4. #04

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.216

   Ethics and Tragedy in Psychoanalysis > Oedipus, or the Outcast of the Signifier > What shall we do with Oedipus? > The hostage of the word

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that Oedipus' answer to the Sphinx's riddle exemplifies "knowledge as truth" — a word wagered without guarantee from the Other — and that this act is not transgression but an act of creation that founds a new symbolic order, rendering ethics possible as fidelity to an inaugurating event.

   Knowledge as truth is a word, a statement for which the subject alone holds the guarantee in an act of anticipation, of 'precipitate identification'.

5. #05

   Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.238

   Sygne, or the Enj oyment of the Remainder > Enjoyment - my neighbour

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Freudian commandment to 'love thy neighbour' founders on the problem of jouissance, which Freud evades: the neighbour is structurally the enemy because enjoyment is always 'the Same' (real register) rather than the similar (imaginary) or identity (symbolic), and Sygne's sacrifice dramatizes the crossing from the service of goods into the abyss of desire-as-enjoyment, illustrating Lacan's Ethics of Psychoanalysis through literary and political analysis.

   My double is absolutely strange to me; I cannot recognize myself in this Same (as myself). The Same (the fact that I am 'absolutely identical' to myself) leads to a loss of identity.

6. #06

   Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.56

   <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **Creative labor** > **Doing not believing**

   Theoretical move: The passage synthesizes Althusser's theory of ideology-as-practice with Lacanian registers (real/imaginary/symbolic) and Žižek's psychoanalytic supplement of fetishistic disavowal, arguing that ideology is not false consciousness or belief but the compulsive, materially embedded performance of social reality—a position that reframes the political problem from enlightenment to the invention of new practices.

   The imaginary is the realm of images and projections, of identifications and fantasies, of wholes and connections.

7. #07

   Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.81

   <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **Creative labor** > **The culture industry**

   Theoretical move: The passage expounds the Frankfurt School's "culture industry" thesis — that industrially produced mass culture functions as propaganda that secures ruling-class hegemony by cultivating passive, conformist subjects — and frames this as the negative-critical baseline against which emancipatory aesthetic theory must be measured.

   Film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, enjoy their own dehumanization as something human.

8. #08

   Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.93

   <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **Creative labor** > **The apparatus**

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that apparatus theory, while more Marxist than auteurism in attending to technology and spectator-subject constitution, ultimately falls short of genuine Marxist film theory by centering on the imaginary and ideal spectators while neglecting economic factors; true Marxist film theory is defined by its attention to contradictions within film form and their relation to contradictions in the capitalist mode of production.

   The spectator thus identifies with the technology to such an extent that she imagines that the film is her reality.

9. #09

   Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.120

   <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **This is it, the beginning (again)**

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that *Fight Club*'s plot structure—its flashback temporality, omissions, and reflexive form—instantiates a Marxist materialist epistemology (the present is intelligible only through historical process), and that according theoretical agency to the film is itself an exercise in dialectics and mediation, Marxism's central aesthetic contribution.

   the climactic revelation that the medium has been duping the spectator, utilizing projection to propagate the illusion that Tyler and the narrator are different people

10. #10

    Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.135

    <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **Mode of production in Fight Club** > **The capitalist gothic**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that *Fight Club*'s gothic aesthetic formally mediates and exposes the capitalist mode of production's concealed contradictions, functioning as a cinematic equivalent of Marx's own gothic rhetoric of illuminating the "hidden abode of production" — thereby treating the film's visual and spatial form as a site of Marxist theory-in-practice.

    It undermines Hollywood conventions, refusing to highlight, spotlight, and flatteringly light faces for identification.

11. #11

    Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.165

    <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **Ideology in Fight Club** > **Genre bending**

    Theoretical move: Fight Club's successive genre-blending operates as a self-reflexive formal strategy: by destabilising generic expectations, the film transforms itself into an interpretative problem that disrupts the 'efficient communication' of Hollywood convention and courts active, critical engagement from audiences rather than passive consumption.

    Are they romantic heroes we identify with, or grotesque caricatures we keep distance from?

12. #12

    Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club · Anna Kornbluh · p.170

    <span id="page-6-0"></span>**[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#page-5-0)** > **Ideology in Fight Club** > **Splicing**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that *Fight Club*'s formal technique of splicing operates as a self-reflexive materialization of ideology critique: the film's editing practice (cigarette burns, spliced frames, diegetic/extra-diegetic switching) enacts within its own medium the very logic of concealed labor and illusory coherence it thematizes, thereby constructing a parallism between the subject's disavowal of dissociation and the spectator's ignorance of cinematic artifice.

    Tyler looks like Jack wants to look; Jack has learned what to look like from the moving picture industry.

13. #13

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **THE LOBSTER AND THE LITTLE GIRL: HOW TO DO THINGS WITH DREAMS, THANKS TO FREUD** > ***Analysis***

    Theoretical move: The passage performs a first-person Freudian dream analysis that pivots on the Lacanian mirror stage and the Oedipal complex, arguing that the dreamer's wish to befriend the phallic-mother-lobster enacts a feminist assertion of feminine power as compensation for the perceived lack of the paternal phallus, while Lacanian recognition through the gaze establishes a moment of reciprocal equality.

    the child ceases to want to identify with the mother and turns to the father seeking solace from him

14. #14

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

    Theoretical move: Through the completed analysis of the "Irma's injection" dream, Freud establishes wish-fulfilment as the fundamental principle of dream-work: the dream's content is shown to be a disguised realisation of the dreamer's wish to be acquitted of responsibility, demonstrating that interpretation reveals latent dream-thoughts condensed behind manifest content.

    three related situations come to the surface in my memory, involving my wife, Irma, and the deceased Matilda, the identity of which three persons plainly justifies my putting them in one another's place.

15. #15

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that dream-disfigurement is produced by a psychic censorship mechanism: a "second instance" suppresses wish-content from the "first instance" by distorting or inverting it before it can reach consciousness, making wish-fulfilment the universal motor of dream formation even where the manifest content is disagreeable.

    My uncle Joseph represents for me both colleagues who have not been appointed to the professorship, the one as a simpleton, the other as a criminal.

16. #16

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    ***The Analysis of a Sample Dream*** > **ANALYSIS**

    Theoretical move: Freud defends the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams against patient objections by introducing hysterical identification as a mechanism whereby an apparently unfulfilled wish in a dream actually fulfils a different (often unconscious) wish, demonstrating that the theory is more nuanced than simple surface-content opposition implies.

    Identification is a highly important factor in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons.

17. #17

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(B) INFANTILE EXPERIENCES AS THE SOURCE OF DREAMS**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that childhood impressions and infantile wishes are not merely incidental but structurally constitutive of dream formation, demonstrating through clinical examples and self-analysis that the latent dream-thoughts are anchored in childhood experiences that analysis—not manifest content—reveals.

    I act as though I were the minister of education, I put myself in his place.

18. #18

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(B) INFANTILE EXPERIENCES AS THE SOURCE OF DREAMS**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that infantile experiences serve as the primary sources of latent dream content, using autobiographical material (the Hannibal identification and anti-Semitic humiliation) and clinical dream analyses to demonstrate how childhood scenes are either directly reproduced or allusively encoded in manifest dream content, requiring interpretation to extricate them.

    Hannibal, with whom I had reached this point of similarity, had been my favourite hero during my years at the Gymnasium

19. #19

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(D) TYPICAL DREAMS**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that all dreams are fundamentally egotistical—every dream conceals a wish of the dreamer's own ego, even when manifest content appears to concern others—and extends this to typical dreams (examination dreams, train-missing dreams, dental irritation dreams) as wish-fulfilling consolations that draw on infantile experience and anxiety.

    In representing Otto in the dream as Baron L., I have at the same time identified myself with some one else, that is to say, with Professor R.

20. #20

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(A) THE CONDENSATION WORK**

    Theoretical move: Freud demonstrates that condensation operates through multiple mechanisms—collective image formation, composite persons, common-mean displacements, and phonetic/semantic word-fusions—showing that the dream-work systematically compresses latent dream-thoughts into manifest content via associative overdetermination rather than simple displacement.

    Irma comes to represent these other persons, who are discarded in the work of condensation, in that I cause to happen to her all the things which recall these persons detail for detail.

21. #21

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(C) MEANS OF REPRESENTATION IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that dreams cannot represent logical alternatives, negation, or contradiction, and instead reduce these to unity through condensation; the primary logical relation dreams can represent is similarity, achieved through identification and composition, which also serves to circumvent the censoring function.

    Identification consists in giving representation in the dream content to only one of a number of persons who are connected by some common feature, while the second or the other persons seem to be suppressed as far as the dream is concerned.

22. #22

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(C) MEANS OF REPRESENTATION IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: The passage systematically catalogues the dream-work's representational techniques—identification, condensation into composite images, inversion (of content and temporal sequence), and the "transvaluation of psychic values"—demonstrating that the formal properties of dream representation are determined by the logic of the dream-thoughts rather than by the perceptual or sensory qualities of the dreaming state.

    A part of the cases, which may be summed up under the word 'contrast,' finds representation, as we have seen, simply by means of identification—that is, when an interchange or replacement can be connected with the contrast.

23. #23

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(F) ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that absurdity in dreams is not a sign of meaninglessness but a specific expressive instrument of the dream-work: it represents the dreamer's latent judgment of "that is nonsense," encodes mockery and contradiction, and—crucially—transforms latent content into manifest form through condensation and displacement, while dream censorship permits untruth about forbidden figures rather than direct critical truth.

    I see now that I am acting like a paralytic in the dream... But I behave like a paralytic, and the dream revels in absurdity.

24. #24

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(F) ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that apparent acts of judgment, inference, and argumentation within dream content are not spontaneous cognitive performances of the dreaming mind but are always traceable to—and borrowed from—the dream thoughts themselves; additionally, he introduces "secondary elaboration" as a fourth factor in dream-formation that imposes a specious coherence on dream material.

    'I am not certain what year it is' is intended for nothing else than to carry out my identification with the paralytic, in the examination of whom this point of confirmation had actually been established.

25. #25

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(F) ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud argues that acts of judgment, astonishment, and explanatory thought appearing within dreams are not independent intellectual performances but are repetitions or displacements of prototypes already present in the dream-thoughts — the dream-work copies reasoning from waking material (including from a patient's neurotic logic) rather than generating it spontaneously.

    By identifying myself with him, I wanted to make an analogous confession to myself.

26. #26

    The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud

    **(G) THE AFFECTS IN THE DREAM**

    Theoretical move: Freud demonstrates how a dream's affect is overdetermined by multiple converging chains of thought—a recent anxiety about a friend's illness, childhood rivalries, infantile wishes for the rival's removal, and guilt over betrayed secrets—all funneled through condensation and displacement into a single manifest dream scene, illustrating the mechanisms of the dream-work and the role of the censor in masking infantile sources of satisfaction.

    all my friends are incarnations of this first figure...they are all revenants. My nephew himself returned in the years of adolescence

27. #27

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.57

    FAN TA SIZ IN G THE E ND

    Theoretical move: Capitalism exploits the constitutive unknowability of the Other's desire by supplying fantasy as both its mystification and its apparent solution—the commodity form oscillates between presenting the Other's desire as enigmatic and as answerable, thereby binding the subject to the capitalist order while keeping belonging permanently deferred.

    The threat to American society constitutes American identity as besieged and, at the same time, envied, which is why… George W. Bush proclaimed that American freedom itself was an overriding motive for the attacks.

28. #28

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.102

    FA S C I SM OR E M AN C IPATION

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the political valence of capitalism's crises is determined by how one interprets the emergent gaze: fascism misreads it as an external distortion to be purified, while emancipatory politics identifies with it as the system's inherent imbalance — a distinction illustrated through The Usual Suspects as a cinematic analogue for the encounter with the gaze.

    The point of emancipatory politics is not the elimination of the gaze but identification with it.

29. #29

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.139

    N OT G OD BU T AN ADV E RTI SE ME N T

    Theoretical move: Advertising functions as the modern form of the big Other, saving subjects from the trauma of freedom by providing an image of a gaze that authorizes consumer choices; McGowan argues this structure is more insidious when it presents itself as liberation from conformity, and reads Fitzgerald's Dr. T. J. Eckleberg as the paradigmatic figure of the absent-yet-operative capitalist Other.

    the advertisement offers a point of identification from which the subject can see itself being seen.

30. #30

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.142

    DAS ADAM SMITH PROBLEM

    Theoretical move: The "invisible hand" in Adam Smith's two major works functions as the modern, capitalist reformulation of God—an absent Other that coordinates and directs subjects' desires, thereby resolving both Das Adam Smith Problem (the apparent contradiction between Smith's moral philosophy and his economics) and the deeper problem of unbearable Kantian freedom that capitalism poses to its subjects.

    Smith's entire moral philosophy has its basis in the emotional or sentimental identifi cation that people experience with each other, and this type of identifi cation plays no role in his conception of the activity of the economic world.

31. #31

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.204

    THE TR IP BE YOND NARC I SSI SM

    Theoretical move: Love is theorized as exceeding both narcissism and desire by enacting a traumatic encounter with the other's irreducible singularity, and this disruptive structure is then contrasted with capitalist "romance," which domesticates love into an investment fantasy organized around the ideology of the soul mate as perfect commodity.

    The person in love agrees to sacrifice social identity for the sake of winning the other's love... Our very symbolic identity loses its stable coordinates.

32. #32

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.292

    . E XC H AN GIN G LOV E FOR ROM AN C E

    Theoretical move: Romantic love functions as the sine qua non of capitalist ideology because it provides the idealized template through which all commodity evaluation is learned; the chapter's endnotes collectively argue that authentic love (Lacanian or otherwise) is structurally traumatic and resists complementarity, whereas capitalism systematically replaces love with romance—a commodified, montage-compressed, ideologically safe substitute.

    Christians cannot just have their Christian love be a part of their identity. It must encompass that identity entirely.

33. #33

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.24

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > The thing’s order

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's "thing's order" names the symbolic order as a self-relating system of signifiers—structurally homologous to Hegelian dialectics—that constitutes human subjectivity, the mirror stage, and the symptom, while ego psychology's failure to grasp the unconscious is recast as foreclosure (psychotic repudiation) rather than repression.

    The Imaginary images of the imago-Gestalt of the body as displayed by the mirror are identified with through o/Others' promptings to do so.

34. #34

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.28

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > The thing’s order

    Theoretical move: By retranslating Freud's 'Wo Es war, soll Ich werden' against the ego-psychological rendering, Lacan argues that the telos of analysis is not ego-over-id domination but the analysand's de-alienating subjectification toward the unconscious subject ($), grounding his ethics of psychoanalysis and his critique of misreadings of Freud that degrade the primacy of speech and signifiers in clinical practice.

    the analysand has a 'duty,' over the extended course of the labor of the analytic process, gradually to overcome his/her ego identifications sustaining resistances to identifying with and affirming various features and facets constitutive of his/her unconscious (and) subjectivity.

35. #35

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.30

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > Resistance to the resisters

    Theoretical move: Lacan's critique of ego-psychological defense analysis shows it to be self-defeating: by privileging the ego as analytic interlocutor, it redoubles alienation and misrecognition, reinforces defenses rather than dissolving them, and substitutes the analyst's suggestive opinions for genuine analytic truth—whereas Lacan insists that the Freudian Thing speaks even through defenses, making everything said (or unsaid) by the analysand available to interpretation.

    the analysand is pushed into the alienation of identifying with the person of the analyst

36. #36

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.35

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > Interlude

    Theoretical move: Lacan's critique of ego psychology, prosecuted through a prosopopoeia of a talking lectern, demonstrates that the ego-psychological ego—conceived as an autonomous, synthetic function—collapses into an inert object indistinguishable from a piece of furniture, and that it is the Symbolic (speech/parole) alone, not ego-level consciousness or perception, that truly distinguishes the analysand's psyche from inanimate things.

    This already implies that a lectern, like an (alter-)ego, can and sometimes does serve as another's point of identification.

37. #37

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.38

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > The other’s discourse

    Theoretical move: Lacan's critique of ego psychology is mobilized to demonstrate that the ego is structurally an alienating sedimentation of the other's discourse and a device of resistance against the unconscious, such that the proper analytic use of the ego is as a *via negativa* — a negative index pointing toward the speaking subject of the unconscious rather than a therapeutic ideal to be strengthened.

    Such clinicians coerce patients into 'identifying with the analyst's ego,' modeling their ego-level identities, at least in part, on those of their analysts. Such identification is put forward as the telos of a successful analytic therapy

38. #38

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.41

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > Imaginary passion

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's mirror stage grounds the ego in a constitutive double alienation—imaginary and symbolic—such that the ego is structurally paranoid, narcissistic, and rivalrous, making ego-to-ego analysis (as in ego psychology) a therapeutic dead end that merely amplifies imaginary passions rather than dissolving the transference.

    this 'self' image, as one image among others, is situated on the flat plane of a visual field in which the imago-Gestalt of the individual's ego is inextricably intertwined from start to finish in alienating social relations

39. #39

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.51

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > The locus of speech

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Lacanian analytic practice turns on distinguishing the Imaginary (ego-centred empty speech) from the Symbolic (unconscious full speech), and that the compulsive repetition of neurotic symptoms is explained through a Hegelian–Kojèvian logic of unrecognised desire, whereby the analyst's appropriate recognition of transferential demands can finally dissolve symptomatic repetition.

    At the level of the Imaginary, the ego's identifications and/or rivalries with little-o others make it such that what alter-egos are perceived as wanting shapes what the perceiving ego establishes as its own teloi.

40. #40

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > Abstract

    Theoretical move: Against the imaginary reduction of psychoanalysis to ego-psychology, this passage argues that the unconscious must be understood as the locus of the Other's speech, structured by signifiers via metaphor and metonymy, with the death drive as the key to repetitive speech—and that analytic training requires restoring the symbolic chain rather than reducing analysis to an imaginary dyad.

    the ego is contingent upon narcissistic identification, and is not the master of its own house

41. #41

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.81

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > The symbolic unconscious

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the symbolic order—structured by the sliding of signifiers over signifieds—is constitutive of the subject, and that both Jungian symbolism and ego-psychological adaptation represent reactionary misreadings of Freud that replace the truth-seeking function of psychoanalysis with domination and narcissistic identification.

    the ego of another (disempowered) person is expected to identify with the supposedly healthy ego of the analyst, implying a subjugation not just to the social order.

42. #42

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > The intersubjective game by which truth enters reality

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the symptom is constituted by the diachronic and synchronic operations of the signifier rather than by object-relations or emotional causality, and that the signifier's arbitrary yet overdetermined nature means it cannot serve as a guide to adaptive reality but instead generates a complex web of meanings that impacts reality — a view that Lacan uses to critique the ego-psychological and object-relations reduction of psychoanalysis to adaptive "corrective emotional experience."

    simultaneously identifies with his father, the 'old father fox' of 'The Fox and the Stork'

43. #43

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > The imaginary in neurosis and object relations

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that neurotic impasses (hysterical and obsessional) are constituted entirely within the imaginary register—between little others and ego-images—and therefore cannot be resolved from within that register; the hysteric perpetuates an alienated desire mediated through the other's image while the obsessive deploys his ego as a puppet to stave off death, both strategies ultimately annulling desire and blocking genuine subjective engagement.

    She identifies with the other woman as object of desire for men just as she did with her mother vis-à-vis her father, and offers the image of the other woman as a kind of mask to her partner.

44. #44

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.91

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > Approaching neurosis in the imaginary vs. the symbolic

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the IPA's ego-strengthening approach to neurosis deepens alienation by keeping the subject in the imaginary register, and that only orienting analysis through the symbolic Other—rather than the imaginary other of identification—can treat neurosis as a genuine question rather than a lure; this critique extends to all empiricist, biologistic, and behaviorist appropriations of psychoanalysis that destroy its symbolic foundation.

    it is also necessarily 'catastrophic.' Lacan compares doing this to treating a limp by amputating the affected leg. As long as everyone else in the society follows a rule that they 'must hop everywhere,' this is satisfying, too, and it allows the subject to behave more like—and to identify better with—others.

45. #45

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.97

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > Freud’s desire

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the IPA's reduction of psychoanalytic training to standardized technique (rather than a humanistic, symbolic "style") constitutes the repression of Freudian truth, and that the only genuine transmission of psychoanalysis is through a demonstrative style that enacts the very mechanisms of the unconscious it describes — not through institutional affiliation or positivist technique.

    de rigueur identifications with an image of Freud and his institution—that stood before any claim of knowledge of psychoanalysis

46. #46

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.106

    [The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-005) > Title

    Theoretical move: The passage situates Lacan's 1956 écrit within the Parisian intellectual climate of "situation" (Sartre) and shows how Lacan simultaneously borrows and critiques the concept: where Sartre locates freedom in action, Lacan relocates it in language, and the very rhetorical structure of Lacan's text—its apostrophe and division of address—enacts a solicitation of transference as an analytic strategy.

    readers are invited to decide what it means to call oneself a psychoanalyst.

47. #47

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-005) > The number two is odd

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the symbolic dimension irreducibly introduces a third term into the analyst-analysand dyad, making "two" structurally odd (*impair*), and uses this mathematical-structuralist move to critique ego psychology's reduction of drive to instinct, to align psychoanalysis with conjectural sciences, and to expose how the IPA's group dynamics reproduce the imaginary mechanisms of identification Freud himself theorized.

    Freud exposes the mechanism of identification that sustains a group and its leader, uniting the members via identification of each individual ego of the group 'with the same ideal image, the mirage of which is borne by the personality of the leader'

48. #48

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.124

    [The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-005) > Once upon a time on an enchanted couch

    Theoretical move: Lacan's satirical fable in "The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956" exposes how the IPA's bureaucratic institutional structure produces narcissistic identification, imaginary prestige, and endless subordination rather than genuine analytic transmission, arguing that the institutional training machine is structurally self-defeating and anti-intellectual.

    the theory of identification with the analyst became popular, preventing the very transmission it was supposed to guarantee

49. #49

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-005) > Appendix

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses this appendix to mount a sustained critique of ego psychology and identification-based training analysis, arguing that genuine psychoanalytic cure produces separation from rather than identification with the analyst, and that a return to Freud's texts is the corrective to the conformist institutionalization of psychoanalysis.

    it is not surprising that the idea of identification with the analyst as evidence of a successful analysis was invented in the training situation where this goal was expected

50. #50

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.165

    [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > Context

    Theoretical move: This passage provides a contextual and structural overview of Lacan's 'On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis,' arguing that the text marks a pivotal shift in Lacan's theorization of psychosis as a unitary clinical structure grounded in the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, situated within a four-period developmental arc in Lacan's broader work on psychosis.

    He stresses that psychosis involves an imaginary mode of relating to the world. At the basis of this relation he proposes that an identificatory structure can be found in which the ego is captured by an ideal image.

51. #51

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.181

    [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > III. With Freud

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's 'return to Freud' culminates in a formal, symbolic account of the unconscious as the Other's discourse, articulated through the L-schema and R-schema, which positions subjectivity as constituted by signifiers at the level of the Other rather than by imaginary ego-dynamics—thereby decisively separating psychoanalysis from both Cartesian consciousness-philosophy and Jungian imaginary interpretation.

    Such stories give shape to the (ideal-) ego and ego Ideals... the subject identifies with the phallic image. Such an identification comes down to assuming the idea that one's life is of value in terms of the Other's desire.

52. #52

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.185

    [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > III. With Freud

    Theoretical move: The passage demonstrates how Lacan's formula of metaphor, applied to the Oedipus complex as the paternal metaphor, structures subjective identity through the substitution of the Name-of-the-Father for the Mother's Desire, while the R-schema (reconceived as a Möbius strip) situates the objet petit a as the virtual support of reality in neurosis versus its chaotic real manifestation in psychosis.

    By installing the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father a space for symbolic identification is created, i.e., a type of identification that is guided by signifiers and that concerns a person's position in the group, as well as his/her position towards desire.

53. #53

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.189

    [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > IV. Schreber’s way

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Schreber's psychosis is structurally determined by the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, which produces a cascade of effects—absence of phallic signification, invasion of the Real by hallucinatory voices and gazes (object a), and compensatory metonymic 'forced thought'—all of which Lacan formalizes through the R-schema and the I-schema as an alternative symbolic architecture to neurotic repression.

    Phallic identification can be observed in neurosis and perversion, where it takes a symbolic and imaginary shape respectively, but not in psychosis.

54. #54

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.197

    [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > IV. Schreber’s way

    Theoretical move: The I-schema formalizes Schreber's psychotic structure as the product of foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father (P₀→Φ₀), while demonstrating that his delusion constitutes an efficient stabilizing solution rather than mere deterioration; madness is re-theorized as the extreme limit-case of human freedom in the face of constitutive lack.

    The element i refers to the narcissistic gratification that is connected to Schreber's transsexual practices. At this level Schreber identifies with the image of femininity. The element m, in its turn, refers to the ideal identification: identification with the position of God's wife.

55. #55

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > V. Postscript

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's central thesis in "On a Question" is that psychosis is constituted by the Foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, which prevents metaphorization of the lack-of-being and produces a fundamental disorder in the subject's relation to the Other, the Symbolic, and the Real—a structural claim that post-Freudian authors systematically miss by failing to distinguish the symbolic father function from its imaginary and real counterparts.

    Whereas conformist imaginary identification compensates for the problem of foreclosure, the figure of A-father destabilizes the acquired solution.

56. #56

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.224

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > III. Where do we stand regarding transference?

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "central defect" of post-Freudian theories of transference (genetic/ego-psychological, object-relational, and intersubjective-introjective) is their reduction of the analytic situation to a dual, imaginary relationship, thereby neglecting the symbolic order and the constitutive impasse of desire; against these, Lacan insists that the direction of treatment must be oriented by the patient's signifiers rather than any normalizing ideal of adaptation or harmonious object-love.

    Conducting analysis from the viewpoint of the two theories discussed above implies that there is only one option left for the analysand: to identify with the analyst.

57. #57

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > IV. How to act with one’s being?

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the analyst's proper mode of being cannot be derived from technical rules, happiness, or comprehension, but must be grounded in the ethics of desire — specifically the desire of the analyst — and that the analyst's stance toward the analysand's demand (intransitive, without object) is the pivot around which the direction of treatment turns.

    The British psychoanalysts most explicitly defined the end of analysis as the subject's identification with the analyst.

58. #58

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.232

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > IV. How to act with one’s being?

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the analyst's function is not to fulfil the analysand's demand but to allow the signifiers bound up with frustration to reappear, thereby distinguishing need, demand, and desire, while also warning against identification-based or "good-for-the-subject" treatments that merely compel repetition or install the superego in place of the analytic relation.

    it is in the oldest demand that primary identification is produced... it will always be an identification with signifiers

59. #59

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.237

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > V. Desire must be taken literally

    Theoretical move: By reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams through the butcher's wife dream, Lacan argues that desire operates through the linguistic mechanisms of metonymy (desire as sliding lack-of-being) and metaphor (surplus of meaning), and that analytic treatment must preserve the literal, signifier-structured dimension of desire rather than reducing it to ego-psychological normalization.

    As patients end up with 'sound principles and normal desires,' they become mere representations of their (ego-)analysts.

60. #60

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.239

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > V. Desire must be taken literally

    Theoretical move: Through close reading of the 'witty hysteric' dream, Lacan articulates that desire is structurally constituted as the interval between need and demand, that man's desire is the Other's desire, and that the phallus is the privileged signifier of the metonymical lack that sustains this structure — a conclusion illustrated both by hysterical identification and an obsessional clinical case.

    the woman not only identifies with her friend's desire (to have an unsatisfied desire) represented by the desire to be deprived of caviar, but also identifies with the man (her husband)

61. #61

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > V. Desire must be taken literally

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the direction of treatment must preserve a place for desire by refusing to respond at the level of demand; the phallus as signifier of lack structures the subject's desire metonymically, and analysis must lead the subject to confront the lack in the Other rather than offering new identifications that only deepen alienation.

    As the hysteric is precisely someone who responds to the Other's desire via identification, s/he remains captivated at this point.

62. #62

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.264

    [Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-009) > I. Structure and the subject

    Theoretical move: Against Lagache's personalist-intersubjective framework, which centres the imaginary and overlooks lack, Lacan argues that the subject emerges not from a progressive introjection of being-for-others but from the intervention of linguistic/symbolic structure on the organism, with Demand marking the transition from need to drive and with the fading of the subject occurring through over-identification with the signifiers of demand rather than through any phenomenological elusiveness of the cogito.

    the fading of the subject occurs when… the subject takes itself to be too strongly identified with whatever signifier it is that elicits the Other's recognition of the subject.

63. #63

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.271

    [Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-009) > II. Where is id?

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that negation (Verneinung/Bejahung) is not a logical operation but a structural one grounded in the signifying chain: the "failed negation" of the French 'ne' exemplifies how repression and the return of the repressed are identical, and how the subject of desire emerges precisely from the space carved out between the statement and enunciation by this structural capacity for one signifier to replace another — making lack, not fusion or adaptation, the founding condition of both subject and objective reality.

    the subject is 'dispersed' among the different drives, or at least among their objects, in a plurality of identifications

64. #64

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-009) > III. On the ideals of the person

    Theoretical move: The passage uses the inverted vase schema to articulate the layered structure of imaginary and symbolic identification — distinguishing i(a)/ideal ego from i′(a)/ego-ideal, situating the Other (mirror A) as the structural third that disrupts dyadic imaginary relations, and arguing that the subject of desire emerges in the gap between statement and enunciation opened by signifying substitution — against object-relations developmentalism and ego-psychology.

    This new model shows yet another type of identification and subjectification occurring with objects, others, and images by means of a relation to the Other.

65. #65

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-009) > III. On the ideals of the person

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the psychoanalytic cure works by progressively exposing object *a* as the cause of the subject's desire and fading, thereby enabling the analysand to traverse their fundamental fantasy, reduce ego-ideal identifications, and face the irreducible aporia of castration as the proper terminus of analysis.

    an identification with the ego-ideal would be found by the viewer of the illusion 'situating himself at I'

66. #66

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-009) > Concluding remarks

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that negation—made possible only by linguistic/symbolic structure—is the central theoretical theme of Lacan's Lagache essay, functioning as the mechanism through which lack is introduced into the real and through which the subject of desire emerges.

    The discussion of identification, both in the imaginary and symbolic registers, is a discussion of how negation is then dealt with in different ways.

67. #67

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    <span id="ch18.xhtml_page_289"></span>[Index](#ch05.xhtml_tocindex-001)

    Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index section (F–I) from a scholarly volume on Lacan's Écrits, listing terms and page references without advancing any theoretical argument.

    identification 12, 17, 28, 35, 38, 42, 51, 70, 73, 76, 89, 91–92, 97, 122–124, 128, 140, 182, 185–187, 189, 192–194, 197, 199, 202, 222, 229, 232, 238–240, 243, 245–246, 256, 262–264, 271, 275, 278–281, 285, 288

68. #68

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > Truly the most, the most truly

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that what is "truly proper" to psychoanalysis—the Freudian unconscious—has been systematically domesticated by Neo-Freudian adaptations, institutional identification, and mimetic transmission, and that reclaiming psychoanalysis requires a "militant" return to what is singular in Freud's concept of the unconscious rather than an imaginary identification with an acceptable image of Freud.

    Popular misinterpretations of Freud constitute an imaginary Freud, an other with whom analysts identify.

69. #69

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-009) > III. On the ideals of the person

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the ego functions as a structural misrecognition-faculty — a lens that distorts rather than corrects — and that the proper distinction between the ideal ego and ego-ideal (as well as the difference between Verwerfung/foreclosure and repression) requires a topological-optical model rather than behavioral observation, demonstrating how the symbolic and imaginary registers differently shape (intra)subjective structure.

    Identification with the ego-ideal – how the child thinks he or she may have to be in order to please the authorities – is, from the point of view of the ideal ego, as it were, seen as conformist and silly

70. #70

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.20

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > Freud's Three- Pronged Spear

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that Freud's critique of religion operates along three interlocking prongs—wish-fulfillment, superego masochism, and symptomatic compromise-formation—showing how infantile illusion and self-punishing ascesis are not contradictory but complementary modes of controlling helplessness, with Nietzsche's bad conscience serving as a structural precursor to Freud's account of the superego.

    It elaborates upon the identification of the deity with a father figure, tensed with powerful ambivalences of love, fear, and hatred

71. #71

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.27

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > Worshipful Obsession, Obsessional Worship > Lacanian Heresy

    Theoretical move: By introducing the three Lacanian registers (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) through a rereading of the Rat Man case, the passage argues that the RSI triad constitutes a comprehensive rewriting of psychoanalytic theory: the Imaginary grounds ego-formation and alienation, the Symbolic structures the unconscious through signifying excess, and the Real names the traumatic, impossible kernel that ordinary reality functions to ward off.

    If identification and the stability of the ego are the primary functions of the imaginary...

72. #72

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.101

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > Myth Was Not Proto- Science > The Ideal of the Redoubtable

    Theoretical move: The archaic Homeric ideal of the "redoubtable" hero is diagnosed as a symptomatic defensive formation: the hero's pose of self-possession against the abyssal Thing (Das Ding) ultimately collapses into narcissism, imaginary investment, and dependency on the Other's gaze, making it structurally homologous with the bifold perceptual complex of the Freudian Thing rather than a genuine engagement with it.

    The Everyman, too, could in his own humbler way seek to imitate the redoubtable... The heroes of legend were thus the ethical models by means of which everyday life stabilized itself in the face of anxiety, pain, loss, deprivation, and death.

73. #73

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.149

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > The Worship of Love > From Circumcision to Crucifixion

    Theoretical move: Boothby argues that bodily mutilation rituals in Judaism (circumcision) and Christianity (crucifixion) operate as structurally distinct symbolic operations: circumcision establishes the signifier of the phallus and holds open the regime of signification, while crucifixion installs a phantasmatic identification with the objet a that risks collapsing into a narcissistic-masochistic perversion rather than genuine opening toward the Other.

    The follower of Jesus is enjoined to identify with the manner of his grisly death. What he suffered, his disciples, too, must suffer, at least figuratively.

74. #74

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.167

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > Credo: How Christianity Invented Ideology

    Theoretical move: Boothby argues that Christianity's distinctive innovation is the elevation of *belief itself* (the act of believing, for-itself) over religious action or content, and that this structure of belief is fundamentally a social/ideological defense against the unknown Other — making it the very mechanism by which the church betrays Jesus's teaching of love.

    The first group ceases to be threatening to me because their beliefs are the same as mine. This Other is assumed to be a replica of myself.

75. #75

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.174

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > The Religious Symptom

    Theoretical move: The passage deploys Lacan's tripartite RSI (Real/Symbolic/Imaginary) framework to argue that the three Abrahamic-plus-Greek traditions are each symptomatic formations organized around a defensive response to das Ding: Greek polytheism as imaginary, Judaism as symbolic, and Christianity as the religion of the Real—and therefore the most extravagantly symptomatic, generating both the greatest defenses and the greatest historical violence. Religion itself is thus theorized as the most elemental and ubiquitous human symptom, substitutable only by other forms of sublimation.

    embodied in legendary figures but available even to the common man through identification.

76. #76

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.177

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > A Broader View?

    Theoretical move: The passage extends Boothby's Lacanian framework for the sacred to non-Western religions, arguing that Hinduism's moksha, Buddhism's sunyata, and Nishitani's Zen phenomenology all instantiate the same fundamental structure: an encounter with the unknowable neighbor-Thing, achieved through the sublimation or dissolution of the ego, confirming religion as the master symptom organized around the irreducible opacity of das Ding.

    the ultimate spiritual realization is achieved when one's innermost sense of selfhood is experienced as identical with the eternal and transcendent reality of Brahman

77. #77

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.21

    Acknowledgments > Introduction > You're No Good

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that psychoanalysis poses a fundamental challenge to all emancipatory politics by revealing that the Good is constituted by its own prohibition (das Ding), making antagonism not a resolvable conflict but an internal, constitutive feature of the social order — a position that differentiates Freud from both liberal reconciliation theories and Marx's ultimate vision of overcoming antagonism.

    liberal political thinkers … view each conflicting position within society as unified and identical with itself.

78. #78

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.33

    Acknowledgments > Introduction > Interminable Repetition

    Theoretical move: McGowan argues that a genuinely emancipatory psychoanalytic politics must abandon the pursuit of the good society and instead identify with the barrier/limit that blocks it, reversing the valence of the death drive from obstacle to constitutive principle of freedom — such that repetition, loss, and the drive become the foundation of political thought rather than problems to be overcome.

    we begin to view identification with the barrier as the paradoxical aim of progress... a psychoanalytic politics insists on identification with the limit rather than attempting to move beyond or eliminate it.

79. #79

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.87

    I > 2 > Th e Ego as Detour

    Theoretical move: The ego functions as a structural detour for the death drive — its side-cathexes diffuse excitation and dull trauma but simultaneously alienate the subject from its own satisfaction, making the strong ego the ideal psychic modality for capitalist subjectivity rather than a remedy for dissatisfaction.

    when the subject adopts the image as its own bodily ego... on one level, the ego provides the subject with a sense of identity and stability

80. #80

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.96

    I > 3 > Analyzing the Rich

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that class privilege functions as a systematic barrier to enjoyment by demanding repression and producing only a circuitous, unrecognized enjoyment (outrage, disgust), so that psychoanalysis's critique of capitalism is not that it produces too much enjoyment but that it structurally prevents subjects from avowing their own enjoyment—making the psychoanalytic rallying cry "more enjoyment" rather than "less."

    Even those who fi nd themselves on the losing side of the class struggle in capitalist society can identify with those on the other side and thereby psychically invest themselves in class privilege.

81. #81

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.102

    I > 3 > Th e Cost of Recognition

    Theoretical move: McGowan argues that the pursuit of social recognition structurally forecloses enjoyment because recognition operates at the level of the signifier's demand while concealing the Other's unarticulated desire; genuine jouissance is incompatible with validation by the Other, and the subject's sacrificed enjoyment feeds the social order, making the pursuit of recognition a form of subjection rather than liberation—a critique that exposes the limit of recognition-based political projects.

    Even those who disdain popularity most often align themselves with some other source of recognition and thereby invest themselves in another form of it.

82. #82

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.107

    I > 3 > Mastery versus Capitalism

    Theoretical move: McGowan argues that capitalism, by universalizing the demand for recognition through the structural appropriation of surplus value, eliminates the 'outside' position that allowed the slave to enjoy, yet simultaneously reveals that enjoyment is always already based on a prior loss — making capitalism the condition of possibility for a 'fully realized infinite' enjoyment rather than the slave's merely 'potential infinite.'

    Some in the position of the slave identify with the master and retain a sense of identity from that of the master. These types of slaves experience the recognition that the master receives as if they receive it themselves.

83. #83

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.137

    I > Changing the World > Th e Modern Critique of Normality

    Theoretical move: Against the modern critical tradition that treats normality as the hegemonic suppressor of difference and subversion as the path to resistance, the passage argues that psychoanalysis inverts this logic: the norm dominates *through* transgression, not despite it, and genuine ethical subjectivity requires recognising that abnormality—not normality—perpetuates capitalist ideology.

    Every symbolic identifi cation is a failed symbolic identifi cation.

84. #84

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.151

    I > Changing the World > Psychoanalytic Success

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that psychoanalytic success consists in the subject publicly avowing its fantasy and acting from the "nonsense" of its own enjoyment rather than sacrificing that enjoyment to social authority — thereby exposing the groundlessness of all symbolic authority and opening a path for collective transformation. Hamlet's trajectory from perverse fool to authentic fool is used as the paradigmatic illustration of this move.

    Many adopt the position of the fool as a symbolic identity that provides meaning for their lives. Such subjects perversely act out rather than accomplishing genuinely successful acts.

85. #85

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.159

    I > Th e Appeal of Sacrifi ce > A Shared Absence

    Theoretical move: Psychoanalysis uniquely resolves the liberal/Marxist impasse on individual vs. society by showing that neither exists independently but each emerges from the other's incompleteness (constitutive lack/failure), and that the subject's foundational loss and frustrated jouissance are precisely what motivate entry into the social bond.

    A society circumnavigates the antagonisms between its members by promoting equality or justice among them all. This equality is an equality born through self-denial.

86. #86

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.169

    I > Th e Appeal of Sacrifi ce > Th e Two Forms of the Social Bond

    Theoretical move: McGowan argues that the social bond has two simultaneous logics derived from Lacanian sexuation: a foundational female logic of not-having (universalized exception, shared loss) that underlies every social order, and a male logic of exception/exclusion (friend/enemy distinction) that societies adopt to obscure the traumatic ground of collective sacrifice—with the former constituting the only real enjoyment of the social bond, and the latter generating mere pleasure through the illusion of having.

    The social bond depends, according to the logic of male sexuation, on excluding a particular group in order to provide an enemy around which the collective identity of members of the society can form.

87. #87

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.175

    I > Th e Appeal of Sacrifi ce > From Enjoyment to Pleasure

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the social bond is constituted through the enjoyment of traumatic loss rather than through pleasure, and that every social project (war, monument-building, political identification) uses pleasure as an alibi for this foundational enjoyment—while the structure of the signifier itself generates paranoia about the Other's enjoyment, rendering utopian equality impossible.

    subjects identify with the leader's symbolic position as a noncastrated ideal existing beyond the world of lack; but on the other hand, subjects identify with the leader's weaknesses, which exist in spite of the powerful image.

88. #88

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.201

    I > Against Knowledge > Taking the Side of Knowledge

    Theoretical move: McGowan argues that emancipatory politics fails when it aligns itself with knowledge/expert authority against enjoyment, because popular identification with political figures operates precisely through shared enjoyment rather than rational conviction — and documentary film, as a form structurally committed to facts over enjoyment, exemplifies this failure.

    Popular identifi cation with a leader occurs on two distinct levels. On the one hand, we identify with the strength of the leader... On the other hand, we identify with the weaknesses of the leader. Th is identifi cation is the key to our ability to enjoy the leader.

89. #89

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.204

    I > Against Knowledge > Too Much Democracy

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that democracy must be reconceived not as a social good but as a lost object—a groundless, excessive enjoyment beyond the capitalist order—so that it can mobilize subjects through sacrifice of interest rather than through rational self-interest, reversing the domestication of democracy by capitalism and aligning it with psychoanalytic emancipation via enjoyment.

    psychoanalysis reveals that enjoyment derives from emancipation from the power of authority… it represents an effort to mobilize our knowledge about enjoyment and its priority in order to make evident the identification of emancipation with enjoyment.

90. #90

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.277

    I > Th e Case of the Missing Signifi er > Th e Political Deadlock

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the fundamental political deadlock is constituted by a structurally missing binary signifier (the signifier of the feminine in patriarchal society) whose absence is both the source of injustice and the condition of possibility for politics and justice itself; a properly psychoanalytic politics transforms this deadlock from an obstacle into a point of identification, redefining emancipation as an embrace of the limit rather than its transcendence.

    A properly psychoanalytic politics would transform it from an obstacle into a point of identification. By identifying with the symbolic deadlock that impedes liberation, one can transform the cause of past political failures into a source of success.

91. #91

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.289

    I > Th e Case of the Missing Signifi er > Th e Immanence of the Missing Signifi er

    Theoretical move: The missing (binary) signifier is not absent from the symbolic structure but present as an absence that constitutes it from within; genuine political engagement therefore requires identification with this structuring absence rather than seeking to fill or eliminate it, inverting the hermeneutic pursuit into a psychoanalytic "finding."

    Th e subject to avoid the political act of identifying itself with the missing signifi er. Th is identifi cation is the result of the fi nding that Lacan mentions.

92. #92

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.294

    I > Th e Case of the Missing Signifi er > Th e Feminine Signifi er Isn't

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the "missing signifier" of the feminine is not an external absence to be filled but an internal torsion within the signifying structure itself; authentic psychoanalytic politics consists not in expanding inclusion but in male subjects identifying with this internal void, thereby revealing that the divide between male and female subjectivity is a division within the subject rather than between subjects.

    When male subjects identify themselves with the feminine and begin to think of themselves in these terms, they do not, of course, immediately transform the material conditions that inform this identity.

93. #93

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.312

    I > Th e Case of the Missing Signifi er > Notes > 2. The Economics of the Drive

    Theoretical move: This endnotes section advances several load-bearing theoretical moves: it aligns the drive's structure with a satisfaction that bypasses aim (via Copjec/Lacan), contrasts psychoanalytic identification-with-the-symptom against Marxist elimination-of-the-symptom, links the drive's constancy to capitalism's logic of endless accumulation, and grounds the ego's rivalry-structure in the Imaginary to argue against ego-psychology.

    the psychoanalytic political project would involve neither the emancipation of the Jew nor the emancipation of society from Judaism but instead emancipation into the position of the Jew. Rather than curing the symptom, we must identify with it.

94. #94

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.321

    I > Th e Case of the Missing Signifi er > Notes > 4. Sustaining Anxiety

    Theoretical move: This endnotes section traces Lacan's theoretical trajectory from an early Hegelian recognition-based psychoanalysis toward a later framework that integrates destructiveness and jouissance into subjectivity, while also mapping how anxiety, enjoyment, and the enjoying Other function in contemporary consumer society, political violence, and fascism.

    the suspension of the defense against excess — or the neutralization of the more destructive defenses — is the only way that the subject's transformation of its relation to its own jouissance can affect others

95. #95

    Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis · Todd McGowan · p.115

    I > Sustaining Anxiety > Th e Paradox of Recognition

    Theoretical move: Recognition's ethical value is undermined by its constitutive failure: it reduces the subject to a symbolic identity and never reaches the real other (the neighbor); genuine ethics and encounter with the other are grounded not in the sacrifice of enjoyment but in enjoyment itself, since it is the other's singular, untranslatable enjoyment that first constitutes the real other as such.

    basketball games and rock concerts allow spectators to identify with the enjoyment that they see and thereby to avoid the trauma of the encounter with the other's enjoyment

96. #96

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_181"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0205"></span>**sexual difference**

    Theoretical move: Sexual difference cannot be grounded in anatomy or biology but is constituted by a fundamental dissymmetry in the signifier: the phallus is the only sexual signifier with no feminine equivalent, so sexual positions (masculine/feminine) are symbolic constructions determined by one's relation to the phallus and formalised through the formulae of sexuation, with the result that no fully 'finished' sexual identity is achievable and the sexual relationship is structurally impossible.

    if the subject identifies with the father, he takes up a masculine position; identification with the mother entails the assumption of a feminine position

97. #97

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_97"></span>**introjection**

    Theoretical move: Lacan redefines introjection against Kleinian and Ferenczian usage by locating it exclusively in the Symbolic register (as introjection of the signifier/speech of the Other, constitutive of the Ego Ideal), while relocating projection to the Imaginary register, thereby dissolving the classical introjection/projection symmetry and exposing it as a confusion between fantasy and structure.

    Introjection thus refers to the process of symbolic identification, the process by which the EGO-IDEAL is constituted

98. #98

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_91"></span>**imago**

    Theoretical move: The passage traces the concept of 'imago' from its Jungian origins through Lacan's early theoretical deployment, showing how Lacan transforms the imago from a neutral universal prototype into a fundamentally negative, alienating and deceptive structure tied to the mirror stage, the fragmented body, and the Oedipus complex — before the term is absorbed into 'image' after 1950.

    Imagos act as stereotypes influencing the way the subject relates to other people, who are perceived through the lens of these various imagos.

99. #99

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part16.xhtml_ncx_66"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part16.xhtml_page_0084"></span>***F*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part16.xhtml_ncx_70"></span>**fetishism**

    Theoretical move: The passage traces the Lacanian reworking of fetishism: shifting Freud's account from a realist (penis-substitution) to a symbolic-linguistic framework (phallus-substitution), extending disavowal as the constitutive mechanism of perversion in general, and ultimately destabilising Freud's claim that fetishism is an exclusively male perversion by proposing that the real penis can itself function as a fetish for heterosexual women.

    in fetishism, the subject oscillates between these two identifications... it involves both identification with mother and with the imaginary phallus

100. #100

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_ncx_113"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_page_0132"></span>***M*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_ncx_122"></span>**metaphor**

     Theoretical move: Lacan's concept of metaphor, derived from Jakobson's linguistic theory, redefines metaphor as the substitution of one signifier for another that produces signification by crossing the bar of the Saussurean algorithm, and deploys this structure across the Oedipus complex, repression, condensation, identification, and love.

     Metaphor is also the structure of identification, since the latter consists in substituting oneself for another (see S3, 218).

101. #101

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_142"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_page_0161"></span>***P*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_154"></span>**preoedipal phase**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reconceives the preoedipal phase not as a dyadic mother-child relation but as an imaginary triangle mediated by the phallus, arguing that psychoanalytic structure requires a minimum of three terms; the intervention of the real drive and then the father as a fourth term disrupt this triangle, and all perversions originate in identifications within it.

     PERVERSION always involves some kind of identification with another term in the preoedipal triangle, whether it be the mother, or the imaginary phallus (or both, as in fetishism)

102. #102

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_198"></span>**Suggestion**

     Theoretical move: The passage distinguishes psychoanalysis from suggestion/hypnosis by arguing that psychoanalysis operates precisely where suggestion fails: by maintaining the distance between identification (I/ego-ideal) and objet petit a, rather than collapsing them as hypnosis does, and by directing the treatment rather than the patient, embracing nonsense over signification, and holding the analyst's knowledge as merely presumed rather than real.

     'the fundamental mainspring of the analytic operation is the maintenance of the distance between I—identification—and the a' (S11, 273).

103. #103

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part18.xhtml_ncx_83"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part18.xhtml_page_0102"></span>***H***

     Theoretical move: This passage (from Evans's introductory dictionary) articulates three interconnected Lacanian theoretical moves: (1) hallucination as the return of the foreclosed Name-of-the-Father in the Real; (2) helplessness (Hilflosigkeit) as grounding both the subject's constitutive dependence on language and the end of analysis as subjective destitution; and (3) hysteria redefined as a clinical structure organised around the question of sexual position and the desire of the Other, distinct from mere symptomatology.

     the hysteric is precisely someone who appropriates another's desire by identifying with them. For example Dora identifies with Herr K, taking as her own the desire which she perceives him to have for Frau K.

104. #104

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_ncx_113"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_page_0132"></span>***M*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_ncx_124"></span>**mirror Stage**

     Theoretical move: The mirror stage is theorised not merely as a developmental moment but as a permanent structure of subjectivity that founds the ego through identification with the specular image, generates imaginary alienation and aggressive tension, and already contains a symbolic dimension in the figure of the big Other who ratifies the image.

     In order to resolve this aggressive tension, the subject identifies with the image; this primary identification with the counterpart is what forms the ego.

105. #105

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_90"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0108"></span>**imaginary**

     Theoretical move: The Imaginary order is defined not as mere illusion but as a structurally necessary, symbolically conditioned register whose basis is the mirror-stage ego-formation; the passage argues that reducing psychoanalysis to the imaginary (identification with the analyst, dual relationship) betrays the symbolic essence of analytic work, and that the only therapeutic purchase on the imaginary comes through its translation into the symbolic.

     Since the ego is formed by identifying with the counterpart or specular image, IDENTIFICATION is an important aspect of the imaginary order.

106. #106

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_ncx_57"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_page_0075"></span>***E*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_ncx_59"></span>**ego-ideal**

     Theoretical move: Lacan systematically differentiates three Freudian 'formations of the ego'—ego-ideal, ideal ego, and superego—by assigning them to distinct registers (symbolic vs. imaginary vs. unconscious) and developmental moments, thereby grounding their algebraic notation I(A) and i(a) in a structural topology of identification.

     both are products of identification with the father, Lacan argues that they represent different aspects of the father's dual role

107. #107

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_ncx_43"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_page_0056"></span>***D*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_ncx_50"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_page_0064"></span>**desire of the analyst**

     Theoretical move: The passage articulates a constitutive ambiguity in Lacan's concept of the desire of the analyst: on one side, it functions as an enigmatic attributed desire that engines the analytic process by sustaining the Che vuoi? question; on the other, it names a properly analytic desire oriented not toward identification or cure but toward 'absolute difference', situating it at the heart of the ethics of psychoanalysis and requiring a training analysis to constitute it.

     'the analyst's desire …tends in a direction that is the exact opposite of identification' (S11, 274)

108. #108

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_ncx_57"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_page_0075"></span>***E*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_ncx_61"></span>**end of analysis**

     Theoretical move: The passage systematically maps Lacan's evolving formulations of the 'end of analysis' across his teaching, arguing that the end-point is a logical terminus defined by subjective destitution, traversal of fantasy, and identification with the sinthome—not therapeutic cure, ego-strengthening, or identification with the analyst—and that it always involves the fall of the Subject Supposed to Know and the reduction of the analyst to objet petit a.

     'the fundamental mainspring of the analytic operation is the maintenance of the distance between the I—identification—and the a' (S11, 273)

109. #109

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part32.xhtml_ncx_214"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part32.xhtml_page_0245"></span>***W***

     Theoretical move: The passage traces the theoretical development of the concept of "woman" across Freud and Lacan, arguing that Lacan's key move is to displace the question of femininity from a biological or universal essence to a structural position in the symbolic order defined by the logic of the not-all, feminine jouissance beyond the phallus, and woman as symptom of man.

     she is required to take the image of a member of the other sex as the basis for her identification

110. #110

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_ncx_57"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_page_0075"></span>***E*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part15.xhtml_ncx_58"></span>**ego**

     Theoretical move: The passage establishes Lacan's theory of the ego as an imaginary, paranoiac formation produced by the mirror stage and grounded in méconnaissance, positioning it against Ego Psychology's rehabilitation of the ego as centre of the subject and ally of psychoanalytic treatment, while also resolving (or privileging) Freud's own internal contradiction between narcissistic and structural-model accounts of the ego.

     The ego is a construction which is formed by identification with the specular image in the MIRROR STAGE.

111. #111

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_30"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_page_0045"></span>***C*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_39"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_page_0052"></span>**Complex**

     Theoretical move: The passage traces Lacan's early concept of the 'complex' as a culturally-produced constellation of imaginary identifications that substitutes for natural instincts, articulating three family complexes (weaning, intrusion, Oedipus) before the concept is gradually displaced by the Oedipus and castration complexes in his mature work.

     A complex involves multiple identifications with all the interacting images, and thus provides a script according to which the subject is led 'to play out, as the sole actor, the drama of conflicts'

112. #112

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_9"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_page_0025"></span>***A*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_22"></span>**autonomous ego**

     Theoretical move: Lacan's critique of the ego-psychology concept of the "autonomous ego" reframes the locus of autonomy: rather than the ego achieving freedom through adaptation and identification with the analyst, it is the symbolic order that is genuinely autonomous, exposing the ego's supposed mastery as a narcissistic illusion.

     this was supposed to be achieved by the identification of the analysand with the strong ego of the analyst

113. #113

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_ncx_202"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_page_0231"></span>***T*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_ncx_209"></span>**transitivism**

     Theoretical move: Transitivism is theorised as a structural phenomenon of imaginary identification in which the boundaries between ego and other collapse, as evidenced by the mirror-inversion it produces; this confusion of self and other also underlies paranoia's logic of attack/counter-attack equivalence.

     Transitivism, a phenomenon first discovered by Charlotte Bühler... refers to a special kind of IDENTIFICATION often observed in the behaviour of small children.

114. #114

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part16.xhtml_ncx_66"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part16.xhtml_page_0084"></span>***F*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part16.xhtml_ncx_74"></span>**fragmented body**

     Theoretical move: The fragmented body (corps morcelé) is theorised as a constitutive counterpart to the Mirror Stage: the perception of bodily disunity drives identification with the specular image that forms the ego, while the memory of fragmentation continues to threaten that ego's synthetic unity, surfacing in aggressivity, negative transference, and hysterical symptoms governed by an 'imaginary anatomy'.

     The anxiety provoked by this feeling of fragmentation fuels the identification with the specular image by which the ego is formed.

115. #115

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_142"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_page_0161"></span>***P*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_149"></span>**phallus**

     Theoretical move: The passage traces the phallus across Lacan's three registers (real, imaginary, symbolic), arguing that Lacan's terminological innovation—distinguishing phallus from penis—clarifies a logic implicit in Freud while elevating the phallus to the status of a privileged signifier that organises both the Oedipus complex and sexual difference, a move that invites both feminist defence and Derridean critique of phallogocentrism.

     the child seeks to satisfy her desire by identifying with the phallus or with the phallic mother

116. #116

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_89"></span>**identification**

     Theoretical move: The passage maps Lacan's theory of identification as a two-tier structure (imaginary/symbolic) grounded in the mirror stage and Oedipus complex respectively, then traces Lacan's progressive reframing of symbolic identification as identification with the signifier (unary trait/S1), and concludes by contrasting false identificatory ends of analysis with the genuine end as subjective destitution and identification with the sinthome.

     it is also a concept which raises important theoretical problems. One of the most important of these problems, which Freud himself struggled with, is the difficulty of establishing the precise relationship between identification and object-love.

117. #117

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_30"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_page_0045"></span>***C*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_42"></span>**countertransference**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reframes countertransference not as the analyst's affective reactions per se, but as the analyst's failure to make adequate use of those affects; ultimately, he dissolves the countertransference/transference binary by insisting on the non-symmetrical, unified structure of transference in which both analyst and analysand are implicated.

     Freud's countertransference was rooted in his belief that heterosexuality is natural rather than normative, and in his identification with Herr K.

118. #118

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_9"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_page_0025"></span>***A*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_15"></span>**aggressivity**

     Theoretical move: Lacan's concept of aggressivity is theorized as a fundamental imaginary relation rooted in the mirror stage and narcissism, distinct from mere aggression and from Freud's death drive, and is given clinical significance as negative transference that must be mobilized early in treatment.

     The consequent identification with the specular image thus implies an ambivalent relation with the counterpart, involving both eroticism and aggression.

119. #119

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_191"></span>**specular image**

     Theoretical move: The specular image is theorized as the founding mechanism of ego-formation in the mirror stage, while simultaneously marking out a class of non-specularizable objects (phallus, erogenous zones, objet petit a) that structurally escape the imaginary register.

     It is by identifying with the specular image that the human baby first begins to construct his EGO in the MIRROR STAGE.

120. #120

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_134"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_page_0151"></span>***O*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_141"></span>**other/Other**

     Theoretical move: The passage establishes the fundamental Lacanian distinction between the little other (imaginary counterpart/ego-reflection) and the big Other (symbolic order, radical alterity, locus of speech), arguing that the big Other as symbolic order is primary over the big Other as subject, and that the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.

     radical alterity, an other-ness which transcends the illusory otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification

121. #121

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_134"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_page_0151"></span>***O*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_138"></span>**Oedipus complex**

     Theoretical move: The passage expounds Lacan's distinctive reworking of the Oedipus complex as a three-timed logical passage from the Imaginary to the Symbolic order, mediated by the paternal function and the phallus, arguing that the prohibition of jouissance operative in the Oedipal myth masks the more fundamental Lacanian insight (drawn from Totem and Taboo) that maternal jouissance is not merely forbidden but structurally impossible.

     In this secondary (symbolic) identification the subject transcends the aggressivity inherent in primary (imaginary) identification.

122. #122

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_98"></span>**inversion**

     Theoretical move: The passage traces Lacan's concept of 'inversion' from Freud's designation of homosexuality through to its properly Lacanian sense as a structural property of the specular image and imaginary phenomena, culminating in the claim that analytic communication is defined by the sender receiving his own message in inverted form — and that both senses are unified in Lacan's reading of Leonardo da Vinci via Schema L.

     Leonardo's specular identification was highly unusual in that it resulted in an inversion of the positions (on schema L) of the ego and the little other

123. #123

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_180"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0203"></span>**Seminar**

     Theoretical move: This passage is a bibliographic and historical entry on Lacan's Seminar, tracing its institutional history, the oral-to-written transmission problem, and providing a complete chronological index of all twenty-seven annual seminars — functioning as reference material rather than advancing a theoretical argument.

     IX | 1961-2 | Identification.

124. #124

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_ncx_113"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_page_0132"></span>***M*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part23.xhtml_ncx_126"></span>**mother**

     Theoretical move: The passage maps Lacan's theory of the mother across three registers (real, symbolic, imaginary) and traces how the child's relation to the mother's desire—structured around the phallus—generates anxiety, drives the entry into the symbolic order, and ultimately requires the paternal function to resolve the imaginary deadlock of the Oedipus complex.

     The child then seeks to satisfy the mother's desire by identifying with the imaginary phallus (or by identifying with the phallic mother, the mother imagined as possessing the phallus).

125. #125

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_30"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_page_0045"></span>***C*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_41"></span>**Counterpart**

     Theoretical move: The counterpart (semblable) is theorized as the 'little other' of the Imaginary register—the other who is not radically Other but merely similar to the ego—thus grounding the formation of the ego in identificatory mirroring and distinguishing imaginary alterity from symbolic alterity.

     the child identifies with his siblings on the basis of the recognition of bodily similarity... It is this identification that gives rise to the 'imago of the counterpart'

126. #126

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_142"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_page_0161"></span>***P*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_155"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_page_0177"></span>**privation**

     Theoretical move: Lacan theorizes 'privation' as a specific type of lack—the lack in the real of a symbolic object (the symbolic phallus)—to rigorously reformulate Freud's account of female castration and penis envy, locating the agent of this lack in the imaginary father and arguing that the mother's unsatisfied desire for the phallus is what first introduces the dialectic of desire into the child's life.

     The child then seeks to fulfil her desire by identifying with the imaginary phallus.

127. #127

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_9"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_page_0025"></span>***A*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part11.xhtml_ncx_17"></span>**alienation**

     Theoretical move: Lacanian alienation is reframed as a constitutive, inescapable structural feature of the subject — rooted in imaginary identification with the counterpart — rather than a contingent accident susceptible to Hegelian/Marxist transcendence or synthesis.

     Alienation is an inevitable consequence of the process by which the ego is constituted by identification with the counterpart.

128. #128

     An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

     <span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_ncx_43"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_page_0056"></span>***D*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part14.xhtml_ncx_49"></span>**desire**

     Theoretical move: This passage establishes Desire as the central concept of Lacanian theory by distinguishing it rigorously from Need and Demand, grounding it in the Hegelian-Kojèvian framework of mutual recognition, and defining it structurally as a relation to Lack caused by Objet petit a rather than a relation to any satisfiable object.

     the hysteric is one who sustains another person's desire, converts another's desire into her own (e.g. Dora desires Frau K because she identifies with Herr K, thus appropriating his perceived desire).

129. #129

     Civilization and Its Discontents · Sigmund Freud

     3

     Theoretical move: Freud advances a structural homology between civilizational development and individual libidinal development, arguing that civilization is built on drive-renunciation (via repression, suppression, and sublimation), that order is a compulsion to repeat modelled on natural regularities, and that the tension between individual freedom and communal restriction is the fundamental, potentially irreconcilable problem of civilization.

     The power of the community then pits itself, in the name of 'right', against the power of the individual

130. #130

     Civilization and Its Discontents · Sigmund Freud

     5

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that civilization is constitutively threatened by an innate human drive to aggression that is irreducible to socio-economic conditions, and that the commandment to love one's neighbor functions as civilization's ideological demand precisely because it runs counter to this fundamental hostility—thus establishing the antagonism between Eros and aggression as the central engine of cultural development.

     employing every available means to this end, favouring any path that leads to strong identifications among them, and summoning up the largest possible measure of aim-inhibited libido in order to reinforce the communal bonds

131. #131

     Civilization and Its Discontents · Sigmund Freud

     5

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that civilization's restriction of the aggressive drive generates discontent by redirecting aggression outward toward outsiders, and that the trade-off between instinctual freedom and social security is structurally unavoidable, culminating in the diagnosis of a "psychological misery of the mass" produced by identification-based social bonding without strong individual leadership.

     This danger is most threatening where social bonding is produced mainly by the participants' identification with one another, while individuals of leadership calibre do not acquire the importance that should be accorded to them in the formation of the mass.

132. #132

     Civilization and Its Discontents · Sigmund Freud

     7

     Theoretical move: Freud advances the paradoxical thesis that the superego/conscience is not merely the product of drive-renunciation imposed by external authority, but that drive-renunciation itself dynamically generates conscience, which in turn demands further renunciation — a reversing of the causal relation that explains why virtue intensifies rather than appeases the severity of conscience.

     Nothing much changes until the authority is internalized through the establishment of the super-ego.

133. #133

     Civilization and Its Discontents · Sigmund Freud

     7

     Theoretical move: Freud resolves the apparent contradiction between two accounts of conscience's origin by arguing that the sense of guilt is fundamentally the expression of the ambivalence-conflict between Eros and the Death Drive: whether aggression is acted out (parricide) or suppressed, guilt is inevitable, and civilization's expansion necessarily intensifies this guilt by transferring the Oedipal conflict onto the social mass.

     By means of identification he incorporates this unassailable authority into himself; it now becomes the super-ego and takes over all the aggression that, as a child, one would have liked to exercise against it.

134. #134

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter2.htm_page42"></span>Ghosts Of My Life: Goldie, Japan, Tricky

     Theoretical move: Fisher uses Jungle/darkside music as a cultural-theoretical site where jouissance, the death drive, and dystopian negativity paradoxically flip into a utopian gesture, while the concept of 'scenius' (collective anonymous production) is posed against individualist celebrity as the structural condition of radical cultural innovation.

     the android/death's head that Rufige Kru used as their logo. The paradoxical identification with death, and the equation of death with the inhuman future

135. #135

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter4.htm_page76"></span>Smiley’s Game: *Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy*

     Theoretical move: Fisher deploys psychoanalytic categories (obsessional neurosis, masochism, the impossible object, fantasy screens, jouissance) to argue that Smiley's character is misread by Alfredson's film, which imposes a neoliberal logic of consumerism and youth onto a figure whose allure depends on the baroque mechanisms of self-deception proper to obsessional neurosis and the organisation of enjoyment around an unattainable object.

     Smiley's internal struggle consists of his necessarily thwarted attempts to refuse any identification with his Soviet counterpart.

136. #136

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter2.htm_page42"></span>Ghosts Of My Life: Goldie, Japan, Tricky

     Theoretical move: Fisher uses Tricky's artistic practice as a case study for theorising the split subject and the voice as an object: Tricky's gender-sliding, spectral vocal production, and class consciousness collectively demonstrate how the voice, far from guaranteeing presence and identity, indexes a fundamental splitting of the subject that is also its creative precondition.

     Speaking in his dead mother's voice, a semi-benign Norman Bates, Tricky was conscious of his (dis)possession by female spectres.

137. #137

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter3.htm_page62"></span>No Longer the Pleasures: Joy Division

     Theoretical move: Fisher argues that Joy Division's depression is not a mood but an ontological-philosophical position that operates beyond the pleasure principle—a Schopenhauerian diagnosis of the Will's obscene undead insatiability—and that what makes it theoretically distinct from ordinary sadness or rock nihilism is the total absence of an object-cause, making it structurally homologous to Lacanian melancholia while functioning as a dangerously seductive half-truth about the human condition.

     That is why Joy Division can be a very dangerous drug for young men. They seem to be presenting The Truth... Their subject, after all, is depression.

138. #138

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter9.htm_page113"></span>Downcast Angel: Interview with Burial

     Theoretical move: Fisher argues that Kubrick's *The Shining* stages a Freudian/Lacanian hauntology of patriarchy: the dead Father's injunction to enjoy persists spectrally, trauma is transmitted intergenerationally as a kind of recording that replays across generations, and the Unheimliche (the uncanny return of the repressed) is coextensive with the domestic space itself.

     Danny may become (his) Daddy, that the damage has already been done (had already been done even before he was born)

139. #139

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter2.htm_page42"></span>Ghosts Of My Life: Goldie, Japan, Tricky

     Theoretical move: Fisher deploys hauntology as the master concept to read English art pop (Japan, Sylvian) and Tricky's music as sites where class anxiety, spectral identity, and the alien/android figure converge, arguing that identification with the alien/void — rather than authentic selfhood — is the politically charged gesture that links postpunk, art pop, and 1990s British music across racial and class lines.

     it was about identification with the alien, where the alien stood in for the technologically new and the cognitively strange – and ultimately for forms of social relations that were as yet only faintly imaginable

140. #140

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter9.htm_page113"></span>Downcast Angel: Interview with Burial

     Theoretical move: Fisher uses The Caretaker's music as a diagnostic object to argue that postmodern culture suffers from a structural anterograde amnesia: not nostalgia as longing for the past, but an incapacity to form new memories of the present, which he links to late-capitalist temporal disorder and the death of rave futurity.

     who has not at some time wanted to do as Casares' hero does and pass beyond the screen, so as to finally be able to talk with the ghosts you have for so long mooned over?

141. #141

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher

     <span id="Chapter1.htm_page14"></span>‘The Slow Cancellation of the Future’

     Theoretical move: Fisher distinguishes hauntological melancholia—a refusal to yield desire for lost futures—from both left melancholy (disavowed attachment to failure) and postcolonial melancholia (disavowed fantasy of omnipotence), arguing that what haunts us is not a lost past but the 'not yet' of futures that popular modernism promised but never delivered, a spectrality that reproaches capitalist realism's foreclosure of possibility.

     the revolutionary process of the abolition of identity… does not mean that liberation casts us into an indifferent sea with no objects of identification, but rather the existing identities will no longer serve as anchors.

142. #142

     Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures · Mark Fisher · p.78

     <span id="Chapter4.htm_page76"></span>Smiley’s Game: *Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy*

     Theoretical move: Fisher uses the figure of Smiley to theorize a subject driven not by repressed sexuality but by a constitutive lack of interiority — a "chameleon" subjectivity that dissolves into role-playing, making desire, drive, and perversion irreducible to sadomasochism or therapeutic models of repression. The passage pivots on distinguishing Smiley's ascetic renunciation-as-perversity from both repression and sadomasochistic enjoyment.

     Karla wins the encounter by never speaking, by transforming himself into the blank screen that Smiley cannot on this occasion become – which makes it all the easier for Smiley to fall into the trap of projecting his own anxieties and preoccupations onto the impassive Karla.

143. #143

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.288

     xxn > The concept of analysis > **0. MANNONI: .. .** *who is the analyst*

     Theoretical move: The obsessional's liberation from the master's imaginary prison requires a temporal process of scansions; through the logic of the Master/Slave dialectic, the obsessional must work through identifying the other's thought as a mirror of his own, until he recognises that the only true master is death — yet this recognition is perpetually deferred because the subject is too comfortable in servitude.

     The subject thinking the thought of the other, sees in the other the image and the sketch of his own movements.

144. #144

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.185

     **XIV**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the fundamental aim of psychoanalytic technique is the symbolic recognition of desire—not narcissistic revelation or imaginary ego-remodelling—by demonstrating through the Dora case that Freud's error was intervening at the imaginary level (remoulding the ego toward Herr K.) rather than naming Dora's true desire (Frau K.) and thereby integrating it on the symbolic plane; this critique positions Object Relations analysis (Balint) as a dead-end that mistakes narcissistic mirage for therapeutic outcome.

     Through the successive identifications and revivals, the subject must constitute the history of his ego

145. #145

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.130

     **X**

     Theoretical move: Lacan extends the inverted bouquet/vase optical schema by introducing a plane mirror to model the reflexive (narcissistic) relation to the other, distinguishing two narcissisms and showing how the ego-ideal (Ichideal) as the captivating image of the other structures the imaginary order of reality and libidinal being—against pseudo-evolutionary stage theories inherited from Ferenczi.

     Narcissistic identification - the word identification, without differentiation, is unusable that of the second narcissism, is identification with the other which, under normal circumstances, enables man to locate precisely his imaginary and libidinal relation to the world in general.

146. #146

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.207

     **XVI**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Balint's object-relations theory as a foil to argue that "two-body psychology" remains a relation of object to object, failing to introduce the properly intersubjective (symbolic) register, and that the erasure of the symbolic and imaginary in favour of a "call on the real" constitutes a technical and theoretical deviation from the fundamental analytic experience.

     Character controls man's relations to his objects. Character always signifies a more or less extensive limitation of the possibilities of love and of hatred.

147. #147

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.121

     **IX**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Freud's article on narcissism to argue that the distinction between egoistical and sexual libido—and the corresponding distinction between neurosis and psychosis—requires the tripartite framework of Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, with the Mirror Stage grounding the imaginary constitution of the ego, and the neurosis/psychosis structural difference hinging on whether the subject retains access to imaginary substitution when withdrawing from reality.

     the subject's relation to its formative identifications, which is the true meaning of the term 'image' in analysis

148. #148

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.70

     **VI**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that ego analysis must be reframed as discourse analysis: the ego's function is constitutively one of méconnaissance, and analytic progress requires moving beyond the dual imaginary relation (ego-to-ego) toward the symbolic structuration of the subject, with the Oedipus complex understood as a triangulated, asymmetrical symbolic structure rather than a simple content to be interpreted.

     Historically this mode of defence by means of ridicule and scorn was explained by her identification of herself with her dead father, who used to try to train the little girl in self control by making mocking remarks.

149. #149

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.218

     **XVII**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues against Balint's object-relation theory by showing that intersubjectivity—not satisfaction of need—is the original and irreducible dimension of desire, demonstrated through the perversions and Sartre's phenomenology of the gaze and love, and concluding that there is no transition from animal need to human desire without positing intersubjectivity from the start.

     In the mirage of play, each identifies himself with the other. Intersubjectivity is the essential dimension.

150. #150

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.146

     **XI**

     Theoretical move: Lacan deploys the optical schema to articulate the structural difference between the Ideal Ego (Idealich) and the Ego-Ideal (Ichideal): the imaginary is regulated by the symbolic (governed by the voice/speech of the Other), and love/transference are theorised as perturbations of that symbolic regulation—love confusing the two registers, transference exploiting the same imaginary mechanism but within the analytic symbolic frame.

     Symbolic exchange is what links human beings to each other, that is, it is speech, and it makes it possible to identify the subject.

151. #151

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.191

     **XV** > The nucleus of repression

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues, via the Wolf Man case, that trauma acquires its repressive force only retroactively (nachträglich): the original Prägung exists first in a non-verbalized imaginary register and only becomes traumatic when it is integrated—and simultaneously split off—within the symbolic order, making repression and the return of the repressed structurally identical, and constituting the nucleus of repression around which subsequent symptoms organize.

     the different phases of imaginary, narcissistic, specular identification - the three adjectives are equivalent when it comes to representing these matters in theory

152. #152

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.74

     **VI**

     Theoretical move: The passage advances the theoretical claim that the Real is defined as what resists symbolisation absolutely, and uses Melanie Klein's case of Dick to demonstrate that without symbolisation the subject is trapped in undifferentiated reality with no ego-formation, no anxiety-signal, and no human world of objects—thus counterposing Klein's interpretive brutality (which introduces the Symbolic) against Anna Freud's ego-educative intellectualism.

     To each of the objectal relations there corresponds a mode of identification of which anxiety is the signal. The identifications in question here precede the ego-identification.

153. #153

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.103

     **vin** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Through a detailed clinical case (Robert), the passage argues that psychotic/autistic construction of the subject proceeds through the dialectic of container/contained, requiring the analyst to embody and then be separated from the persecutory object (Wolfl), so that the child can build a body-ego, work through castration anxiety, and finally distinguish fantasy from reality — demonstrating that the therapeutic relationship literalizes and re-enacts the stages of primordial subject-constitution.

     This identification with a castrating phallic mother remained from then on within the plane of the past

154. #154

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.306

     xxn > A spoken commentary on Freud's *Verneinung,* by Jean Hyppolite\* > **INDEX**

     Theoretical move: This is an index page from Seminar I, providing page references for key Lacanian and psychoanalytic concepts; it is non-substantive as a theoretical argument but maps the distribution of core concepts (imaginary, ideal ego, ignorance, image, interpretation, intersubjectivity, introjection) across the seminar.

     relation to identification 116,125,132, 280-1 and identification 281

155. #155

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.106

     **vin** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the case of Robert and his single word "Wolf!" to distinguish the superego (as senseless, ferocious law located in the symbolic) from the ego-ideal (as exalting), and to articulate how even the most reduced form of language ties a subject to the human community, while also returning to the optical schema of container/contained to theorize the nascent imaginary in psychotic structure.

     It ends up being identified with what I call the ferocious figure, with the figures which we can link to primitive traumas the child has suffered.

156. #156

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.136

     **XI**

     Theoretical move: The passage works through Freud's "On Narcissism" to distinguish two distinct functions—Ideal Ego (*Idealich*) and Ego Ideal (*Ichideal*)—arguing that their coexistence in Freud's text is not a confusion but marks two different structural functions; simultaneously, the passage establishes that both narcissistic and anaclitic object choices are imaginary and grounded in identification, and separates sublimation (object-libido process) from idealization (ego-libido process) as theoretically distinct operations.

     The Anlehnungstypus is no less imaginary, since it is also based on a reversal of identification. The subject thus takes his bearings on a primitive situation.

157. #157

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.190

     **XIV**

     Theoretical move: Lacan maps the first phase of analysis as a movement from ego-unknown (0) to imaginary identification (0'), structuring it as a mirror-stage repetition within the analytic setting, and argues that this narcissistic exaltation must be surpassed through a second phase organised around the Ideal Ego and the analyst's transference function.

     Bach time, this projected image awakens in the subject the feeling of an exaltation without limit, of a mastery of every outcome

158. #158

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.86

     **vn**

     Theoretical move: Using the optical schema of the inverted bouquet, Lacan argues that the constitution of the ego and of reality depends on the position of the subject within the symbolic order: only from within the symbolic cone does the imaginary/real articulation cohere, while Dick's psychosis exemplifies the failure of this conjunction. Lacan simultaneously critiques Klein for lacking theories of the imaginary and the ego, and distinguishes projection (imaginary) from introjection (symbolic).

     He can bite, absorb the body of his mother. The style of this incorporation is one of destruction... he clothes them with the same capacities for destruction as those of which he feels himself the bearer.

159. #159

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.40

     **m**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that resistance cannot be located simply in the ego or secondary process, but must be understood in relation to the subject's historical discourse — a present synthesis of the past — and that the foundational analytic question is not memory per se but recognition, whose possibility is grounded in the subject's present structuration by socialised time and history.

     among the lines fomented by the fringe of the curtain I notice, once again... the silhouette of a face... like the face of an eighteenth-century marquis... produced as a result of a gestaltlike crystallisation... in speaking of the recognition of a figure one has known for a long time.

160. #160

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.57

     **IV** > **M. HYPPOLITE:** *Rejection [rejet]?*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that speech has two fundamental dimensions—mediation (hooking onto the other) and revelation (of the subject's truth)—and that resistance arises precisely when revelatory speech fails to arrive, causing speech to collapse entirely into its mediatory/relational function; this dialectic between full and empty speech structures the entire analytic experience, including the ego's constitutive dependence on the other.

     the ego-related aspect of resistances... why does the subject alienate himself all the more the more he affirms himself as ego?

161. #161

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.175

     **Xffl**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Mirror Stage inaugurates a fundamental imaginary alienation in which desire is projected onto the other, generating an irreducible aggression toward the other as the site of that alienation; the symbolic order (language, the Fort/Da game) is the only mediation that rescues the subject from the destructive logic of the imaginary dual relation, while also locating primary masochism and the death drive at the juncture of the imaginary and symbolic.

     Freud writes that the ego is constructed out of its successive identifications with the loved objects which allowed it to acquire its form. The ego is constructed like an onion, one could peel it, and discover the successive identifications which have constituted it.

162. #162

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.183

     **XIV**

     Theoretical move: Lacan articulates how "man's desire is the desire of the other" operates on two distinct planes—the imaginary (specular captation and alienation) and the symbolic (mediation through language/law)—and shows how the transition between primitive narcissistic libido and genital libido, organized around the Oedipal drama, explains the reversibility of love and hate and the role of the ego's imaginary function.

     desires of the child initially pass via the specular other. That is where they are approved or reproved, accepted or refused. And that is how the child serves his apprenticeship in the symbolic order and accedes to its foundation, which is the law.

163. #163

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.282

     xxn > The concept of analysis > **0. MANNONI: ft** *is the navel of speech.*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that transference must be understood through the dialectic of the imaginary and symbolic registers rather than reduced to the real (Ezriel) or to ego-normalization (ego psychology); the imaginary relation, rooted in the mirror stage and the ideal ego, crystallizes transference while the symbolic—via speech and the analyst as mediating Other—enables the subject's integration of repressed history.

     what is set up, via the go-between of the imaginary relation, is an identification - no doubt only momentarily, on account of its being linked to the instinctual cycle.

164. #164

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.142

     **XI**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the animal ethology of Gestalt-governed sexual behaviour (stickleback dance) as a contrast case to argue that in the human animal, the imaginary function is radically disordered — no image adequately releases sexual behaviour — which is precisely why the mirror apparatus (real image/spherical mirror schema) is needed to theorise how the ego-ideal operates at the joint of the imaginary and the symbolic, and how this bears on the question of the end of analysis.

     The subject literally identifies itself with the releasing stimulus. The male is caught up in the zigzag dance on the basis of the relation that is set up between himself and the image which governs the releasing of the cycle of his sexual behaviour.

165. #165

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.152

     **xn**

     Theoretical move: The optical schema of the spherical and plane mirror is used to articulate the tripartite Real/Imaginary/Symbolic structure, showing how the Mirror Stage institutes the Ideal Ego as an anticipatory mastery that alienates the subject's fragmented desire into the other, while grounding the Hegelian thesis that 'desire is the desire of the other' in a structural account of human subjectivity distinct from animal Innenwelt/Umwelt coupling.

     It is in so far as his desire has gone over to the other side that he assimilates himself to the body of the other and recognises himself as body.

166. #166

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.157

     **xn**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the mirror-apparatus schema to articulate how the imaginary specular dialectic introduces the death drive as a structural (not merely biological) dimension of human libido, and then extends this via Freud's 'Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams' to show how topographical and temporal regression correspond to shifts in the plane of reflection, with narcissism functioning as the libidinal complement of the egoism of the dream.

     it is right at the heart of the dream's consciousness... that we have to search, in the person who plays the leading role, for the sleeper's own person. But the point is that, it is not the sleeper, it is the other.

167. #167

     Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.271

     **XXI**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Freudian concepts of condensation (Verdichtung), negation (Verneinung), and repression (Verdrängung) are not merely mechanisms but structural features of how speech exceeds discourse—each marks a different mode by which "authentic speech" (as opposed to erring discourse) operates beyond the subject's conscious control, with desire ultimately identified with the revelation of being rather than wish-fulfillment.

     It marks one of the crossings of the threshold of the identification of being, the passage of being into a new stage, a new symbolic incarnation of itself.

168. #168

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.100

     BookX Anxiety > *NOT WITHOUT HAVING IT*

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances a catalogue of partial objects (objet petit a) as pre-symbolic, non-shareable objects whose entry into the field of exchange signals anxiety, while simultaneously arguing that the partial object's synchronic function in transference has been systematically neglected — a neglect that explains Freud's limit at castration and the post-analytic failures in sexual function. Topological surfaces (cross-cap, Möbius strip) are then deployed to distinguish the specular (imaginary) object from objet petit a.

     there is the plane of the first identification with the specular image, the original misrecognition of the subject in his totality.

169. #169

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.31

     BookX Anxiety > **ANXIETY, SIGN OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan marks a decisive 'leap' beyond Hegel on the function of desire: whereas Hegel's desire is desire of/for another *consciousness* (leading necessarily to the struggle to the death), Lacanian desire is desire of the Other qua *unconscious lack*, mediated by the fantasy as image-support — a distinction formalised through four formulae and the division-remainder algebra that produces the barred subject and objet a as co-residues on the side of the Other.

     It's along this path that all those subjects… were constituted as subjects… with the operation of the unary trait

170. #170

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.46

     BookX Anxiety > **FROM THE COSMOS TO THE** *UNHEIMLICHE*

     Theoretical move: By tracing Hamlet's two modes of identification—with the specular image i(a) and with the lost object a—Lacan distinguishes the imaginary register from a remainder that escapes specularization, using the cross-cap topology to show that minus-phi (the phallus as lack) and objet petit a share a status irreducible to the specular image, thereby framing anxiety as the privileged passageway between cosmism and the object of desire.

     There is the identification with i(a), the specular image such as it is offered to us with the stage on the stage, and there is the more mysterious identification — whose enigma starts to be developed here — with the object of desire as such, a

171. #171

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.150

     **x** > **ON A LACK THAT IS IRREDUCIBLE TO THE SIGNIFIER**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reframes the analytic paradox of "defence against anxiety" by arguing that defence is not against anxiety itself but against the lack of which anxiety is a signal, and he further differentiates the structural positions of the objet petit a in neurosis versus perversion/psychosis to clarify the handling of the transferential relation — culminating in a redefinition of mourning as identifying with the function of being the Other's lack.

     to push a little further what Freud said about mourning as an identification with the lost object. This is not an adequate definition of mourning.

172. #172

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.359

     **xx** > **Notes** > Chapter XVIII The Voice of Yahweh > Chapter XXII From Anal to Ideal

     Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index section from Seminar X, listing proper names, concepts, and bibliographic references alphabetically with page numbers; it contains no independent theoretical argument.

     identification 6, 367, 901, 95, 111, 117-18, 128 with common object (masochism) 105, 107 with lost object 36, 141 primary identification 40

173. #173

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.121

     BookX Anxiety > **VIII**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the *passage à l'acte* is constituted by the subject's absolute identification with *objet a* — her reduction to and ejection from the scene as that object — and that this structural logic, rather than tactlessness or countertransference, explains why Freud himself enacts a *dropping* (passage à l'acte in reverse) when he terminates the treatment of the young homosexual woman. The topology of *a* in the mirror of the Other is shown to illuminate both hypnosis and obsessional doubt as different modalities of the object's structural invisibility to the subject.

     the identification with the object as that upon which bears what he expressed as a vengeance on the part of the griever

174. #174

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.114

     BookX Anxiety > **VIII**

     Theoretical move: The passage reframes Objet petit a not as the intentional object *of* desire (in the phenomenological/Husserlian sense) but as the *cause* of desire that lies *behind* it, prior to any internalization; this reconfiguration is then used to distinguish the structural positions of sadism and masochism as different modes of identification with the object.

     what the agent of sadistic desire doesn't know is what he is seeking... to make himself appear... as a pure object, as a black fetish... the masochist's position, for whom this embodiment of himself as object is the declared goal.

175. #175

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.126

     BookX Anxiety > *PASSAGE* **A** *L'ACTE* **AND ACTING-OUT** > Second table of division

     Theoretical move: The passage distinguishes the *passage à l'acte* from acting-out by locating the former on the side of the maximally barred subject who falls off the stage of the Other into the world, while developing the pre-specular logic of objects *a* as remainder and their relation to anxiety, ideal ego constitution, and depersonalization in psychosis.

     How is it that a, the object of identification, is also a, the object of love? Well, it is to the extent that it metaphorically wrenches the lover... from the status of the loveable one... to make him a subject of lack.

176. #176

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.341

     **xx** > **FROM THE** *a* **TO THE NAMES-OF-THE-FATHER**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that desire and jouissance are structurally disjoint—separated by a central gap—and that the object *a* as the irreducible remainder is the cause of desire, not a brute forced fact; it then uses the inhibition-symptom-anxiety grid at the scopic level to reframe mourning as the labour of restoring the link to the masked object *a*, distinguishing Lacan's account from Freud's while following the same trajectory.

     this desire, although it has a reference that is internal to a, is identified with the ideal of the position that the analyst has obtained or believes he has obtained at the place of reality

177. #177

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.288

     **xx** > **WHAT COMES IN THROUGH THE EAR**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the voice, as object a, is not assimilated but incorporated (Einverleibung), functioning not as sonorous resonance in physical space but as what resonates ex nihilo in the void of the Other — thereby linking the voice-object to anxiety, the desire of the Other, and ultimately to sacrifice as the capture of the Other in the web of desire.

     I believe that this is where we put our finger on the form of identification that I wasn't able to broach last year and whose first model at least is provided by the identification of the voice. Indeed, in certain cases, we are not speaking about the same identification as in other cases, we are speaking about Einverleibung, incorporation.

178. #178

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.15

     BookX Anxiety > **ANXIETY IN THE NET OF SIGNIFIERS**

     Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar X by positioning anxiety as the nodal concept that will retroactively knot together the key terms of his previous disquisitions (fantasy, the Graph of Desire, the desire of the Other, the subject's relation to the signifier), insisting anxiety is not locatable at the centre of seriousness/care/expectation but rather escapes that encirclement — and distinguishing the Lacanian approach from existentialist (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre) treatments of anxiety.

     renders the relationship to desire at once homologous with and distinct from narcissistic identification

179. #179

     Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.137

     BookX Anxiety > *PASSAGE* **A** *L'ACTE* **AND ACTING-OUT** > Second table of division

     Theoretical move: The passage uses Freud's case of female homosexuality to demonstrate that acting-out is structurally addressed to the Other, that the unconscious desire can operate through lying/fiction, and that Freud's own passage à l'acte (abandoning the case) reveals his inability to think femininity as evasive structure—while also critiquing ego-identification as the goal of analysis by pointing to the unassimilable remainder (objet a) it leaves untouched.

     it's not about identifying with an image as the reflection of the ideal ego in the Other, but with the analyst's ego, resulting in what Balint speaks of, the veritable manic that he describes as standing at the end of an analysis thus characterized.

180. #180

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.288

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > IN YOU MORE THAN YOU

     Theoretical move: Lacan defines hypnosis structurally as the confusion of the ideal signifier (identification) with the objet a, and then uses this definition to articulate the analytic operation as precisely the maintenance of the distance between these two poles — with the analyst's desire functioning to isolate the a and enable a "crossing of the plane of identification" that ultimately transforms the fundamental fantasy into the drive itself, constituting the uncharted "beyond of analysis."

     the fundamental mainspring of the analytic operation is the maintenance of the distance between the I—identification—and the a.

181. #181

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.286

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > IN YOU MORE THAN YOU

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topological figure of a surface crossing itself (cross-cap/Möbius-type surface) to argue that the line of self-intersection symbolizes identification, and then critiques any conception of analysis that terminates in identification with the analyst as eliding the true motive force of analysis — insisting there is a "beyond" to identification.

     This line of intersection is for us what may symbolize the function of identification.

182. #182

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.259

     FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE

     Theoretical move: Lacan draws a structural distinction between projection and introjection by assigning them to different orders — the symbolic and the imaginary respectively — arguing that the intuitive, unreflective use of psychoanalytic vocabulary (identification, idealization, projection, introjection) is the primary source of theoretical confusion, and that language itself has a fundamental topology that pre-orients the speaking subject.

     We shall be dealing with the most ordinary terms, such as identification, idealization, projection, introjection. These are not easy terms to handle and it is not made any easier by the fact that they already have meanings.

183. #183

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE

     Theoretical move: Lacan redefines transference against ego-psychological and reality-adaptation frameworks by positing it as "the enactment of the reality of the unconscious," insisting that the unconscious is constitutively bound to sexuality — a linkage that post-Freudian analysis has progressively forgotten.

     this alienating identification that any conformity constitutes, even when it is with an ideal model, of which the analyst, in any case, cannot be the support

184. #184

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan

     OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW, OF THE FIRST DYAD, AND OF THE GOOD > THE FIELD OF THE OTHER

     Theoretical move: By showing that the sovereign good can only be located at the level of the law (not pleasure), Lacan argues that the objet petit a—those objects (breast, faeces, gaze, voice) that serve no function—is the pivotal term that introduces the dialectic of the subject of the unconscious, grounding alienation/division of the subject in the recognition of the drive rather than in any dialectic of beneficial objects.

     Its term is, strictly speaking, what is called identification.

185. #185

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.289

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the analyst's desire—as an unknown x oriented against identification—is the operative force that enables the subject's crossing of the plane of identification, thereby returning the subject to the plane of the drive and the reality of the unconscious; he further situates the voice and the gaze as the two privileged objects (objet a) through which science's encroachment on the human field can be illuminated.

     tends in a direction that is the exact opposite of identification, that the crossing of the plane of identification is possible

186. #186

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.258

     OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW, OF THE FIRST DYAD, AND OF THE GOOD > OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the object of love from the object of desire/drive by locating love in the narcissistic field (Lust/Lust-Ich symmetry) while insisting that the object of desire is not clung to but circled around as its cause — the drive's object — and that desire can also arise "emptily" from prohibition alone.

     Identification with the object of love is as silly as that. And I do not see why that should create so many difficulties, even to Freud.

187. #187

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.270

     FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE > FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the analyst's desire is best mapped by analogy with the slave (not the master), and pivots to ground the ego ideal in the "single stroke" (einziger Zug) as the first signifier in the field of the Other/desire, distinguishing it from narcissistic identification and showing how Freud's identification topology opens onto the Lacanian subject.

     There are enigmas in identification, even for Freud himself. He seems to be surprised that the regression of love should take place so easily in terms of identification

188. #188

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.282

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > IN YOU MORE THAN YOU

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the 'liquidation of the transference' cannot mean dissolving the unconscious or eliminating knowledge; rather, it must mean the permanent liquidation of the deceptive movement by which transference closes the unconscious—culminating not in identification with the analyst but in the dissolution of the Subject Supposed to Know as a structural position.

     Freud designates for us its natural culmination in the function known as identification.

189. #189

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.201

     THE PARTIAL DRIVE AND ITS CIRCUIT > THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the objet a is never the aim of desire but rather the foundation of identification (or its disavowal), and uses this to pivot toward Freud's analysis of love, establishing that love's fundamentally narcissistic structure is what must be interrogated to understand how the love object can come to function as an object of desire.

     It is either pre-subjective, or the foundation of an identification of the subject, or the foundation of an identification disavowed by the subject.

190. #190

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.157

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that mapping the subject against "reality" rather than against the signifier constitutes a fundamental degradation of psychoanalytic experience into psychology, and that the ego—the "psychological isolate"—is a theoretical deviation that confuses the subject with a mere adaptive organism, in flagrant contradiction with what analytic experience actually reveals through the function of the internal object.

     imagines himself to be a man merely by virtue of the fact that he imagines

191. #191

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.247

     OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW, OF THE FIRST DYAD, AND OF THE GOOD > THE FIELD OF THE OTHER

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Subject Supposed to Know is the constitutive condition of transference, and that Freud occupies a uniquely legitimate—and unrepeatable—position as the one analyst who genuinely held the knowledge he was supposed to know, making his function the permanent horizon against which every analytic position is measured.

     The function, and by the same token, the consequence, the prestige, I would say, of Freud are on the horizon of every position of the analyst. They constitute the drama of the social, communal organization of psycho-analysts.

192. #192

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.132

     WHAT IS A PICTURE? > WHAT IS A PICTURE?

     Theoretical move: Lacan establishes a structural overlap—but non-identity—between the 'terminal arrest of the gesture' in scopic creation and the 'moment of seeing' in logical time, arguing that the gaze as terminal act freezes movement and anchors the subject's identificatory haste, thereby linking the scopic drive to the temporality of logical time via the concept of suture.

     in another dialectic that I called the dialectic of identificatory haste, I put as the first time, namely, the moment of seeing.

193. #193

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.283

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

     Theoretical move: The passage pivots on the distinction between specular identification (the ego ideal as the point in the Other from which the subject is seen) and the deeper, alienated level at which the objet petit a is encountered in transference — love as deception is contrasted with the paradoxical 'something more than you' that the analysand addresses to the analyst, culminating in the logic of the gift-turned-into-excrement as the swerve that marks analytic conclusion.

     the identification in question is not specular, immediate identification. It is its support. It supports the perspective chosen by the subject in the field of the Other

194. #194

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.129

     WHAT IS A PICTURE? > OF THE GAZE

     Theoretical move: The passage theorizes the painter's gesture as the originary "laying down of the gaze," arguing that the brush stroke is not deliberate choice but a terminal act that retroactively produces its own stimulus—inverting the temporal structure of signification (where identification is projected forward) into a scopic dimension where the "moment of seeing" is the end-point, thereby distinguishing gesture from act.

     That which in the identificatory dialectic of the signifier and the spoken will be projected forward as haste, is here, on the contrary, the end

195. #195

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.287

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Freud's schema of hypnosis as structurally equivalent to his own topology, identifying Freud's 'object' as the objet a and demonstrating that hypnosis (and collective fascination) operates by the superposition of the objet a with the ego ideal — with the gaze as the nodal point of this conjunction.

     defined by the relation and the distance of the objet petit a to the idealizing capital I of identification.

196. #196

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.272

     FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE > FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes two forms of identification operative in transference — one anchored in the ego ideal (narcissistic, specular) and one introduced by separation and centred on the objet a as topological object — and argues that it is the signifier's entry into human life that makes sex capable of bringing death into presence, collapsing the life/death drive distinction into a single articulation at the level of the unconscious signification of sex.

     But there is another function, which institutes an identification of a strangely different kind, and which is introduced by the process of separation.

197. #197

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.160

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > ANALYSIS AND TRUTH

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that transference is neither a mere therapeutic means nor reducible to identification; rather, transference is the making-present of the closure of the unconscious—the act of missing the right encounter at the right moment—and identification is only a false or premature termination of analysis.

     identification is merely a pause, a false termination of the analysis which is very frequently confused with its normal termination.

198. #198

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.162

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > ANALYSIS AND TRUTH

     Theoretical move: The passage advances the claim that topological thinking—specifically the notion of surfaces that are simultaneously inside and outside—is uniquely necessary for conceptualizing the unconscious, and introduces the object as an 'obturator' (a partial, not merely passive, blocking function) as the key to understanding transference at the correct level.

     false definitions that may be given of its termination, like that of Balint when he speaks of identification with the analyst

199. #199

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.122

     WHAT IS A PICTURE? > WHAT IS A PICTURE?

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the human subject's relationship to the gaze is distinguished from animal mimicry by the subject's capacity to isolate and play with the screen/mask—using it as a mediating function between semblance and the gaze—rather than being wholly captured in imaginary lure.

     it is with the help of this doubling of the other, or of oneself, that is realized the conjunction from which proceeds the renewal of beings in reproduction.

200. #200

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.132

     WHAT IS A PICTURE? > WHAT IS A PICTURE?

     Theoretical move: Lacan draws a structural parallel between the "terminal arrest" of the gesture in painting/dance and the "moment of seeing" in his logical time, linking both to the gaze's freezing power—culminating in the concept of the evil eye—and arguing that scopic creation is constitutively a succession of "small dirty deposits" rather than pure expression.

     the dialectic of identificatory haste, I put as the first time, namely, the moment of seeing

201. #201

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.156

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > ANALYSIS AND TRUTH

     Theoretical move: Lacan displaces the Cartesian cogito — with its fantasy of a homunculus or synthetic 'I' — by the barred subject ($), constituted as secondary to the signifier through the logic of the unary stroke, which introduces the originary split between subject and sign.

     The subject himself is marked off by the single stroke, and first he marks himself as a tatoo, the first of the signifiers.

202. #202

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.157

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that orienting analytic practice toward the subject's relation to "reality" rather than to the signifier collapses into psychology, which isolates and degrades the subject; the ego-as-psychological-isolate is a deviation from authentic psychoanalytic theorization, which must instead retain the function of the internal object.

     introjection or projection are always used rather recklessly. But, certainly, even in this context of unsatisfactory theorization, something is given to us that comes into the

203. #203

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.160

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > ANALYSIS AND TRUTH

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes transference from identification and from the therapeutic aim, arguing that transference is the structural mechanism by which the closure of the unconscious is made present—the act of missing the right encounter at the right moment—rather than a means to an end or a form of identification, which is merely a false or premature termination of analysis.

     identification is merely a pause, a false termination of the analysis which is very frequently confused with its normal termination.

204. #204

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE

     Theoretical move: Lacan redefines transference not as the enactment of an alienating illusion toward an ideal model, but as "the enactment of the reality of the unconscious," opposing prevailing ego-psychological conceptions that ground transference in reality-rectification, and insisting that the unconscious is strictly consubstantial with sexuality in Freud's sense.

     this alienating identification that any conformity constitutes, even when it is with an ideal model, of which the analyst, in any case, cannot be the support

205. #205

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.162

     ANALYSIS AND TRUTH OR THE CLOSURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS > ANALYSIS AND TRUTH

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the topology of the unconscious by arguing that it is structurally inside the subject yet can only be realized outside, in the locus of the Other, and introduces the object as an "obturator" to figure this inside/outside structure—pointing toward the eye as a coming illustration of this topological object.

     like that of Balint when he speaks of identification with the analyst

206. #206

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.201

     THE PARTIAL DRIVE AND ITS CIRCUIT > THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the objet petit a is never the aim of desire but rather functions as a pre-subjective foundation or disavowed identification, and uses this to reframe the love object's relationship to desire as resting on equivocation, with love's fundamentally narcissistic structure grounded in the pleasure principle rather than the drive.

     the foundation of an identification of the subject, or the foundation of an identification disavowed by the subject.

207. #207

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan

     OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW, OF THE FIRST DYAD, AND OF THE GOOD > THE FIELD OF THE OTHER

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that ethics fails when grounded in pleasure, and that the Kantian critique of the sovereign good points instead to the Law and desire; it is the recognition of the drive—and specifically of objet petit a as objects that serve no function—that grounds the dialectic of the divided/alienated subject of the unconscious.

     Its term is, strictly speaking, what is called identification.

208. #208

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.258

     OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW, OF THE FIRST DYAD, AND OF THE GOOD > OF THE SUBJECT WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the object of desire from the object of love by locating the former as the cause-object (objet petit a) around which the drive circles, while the latter is grounded in narcissistic identification—making the object of love a "good object" addressed to an other, whereas desire is structured by lack and prohibition.

     Identification with the object of love is as silly as that. And I do not see why that should create so many difficulties, even to Freud.

209. #209

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.259

     FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes identification, idealization, projection, and introjection by anchoring them topologically in different orders (symbolic vs. imaginary), arguing that intuitive "common" usage of these terms is the root of theoretical misapprehension, and that language orients the speaking subject in a fundamental topology that exceeds everyday understanding.

     We shall be dealing with the most ordinary terms, such as identification, idealization, projection, introjection. These are not easy terms to handle and it is not made any easier by the fact that they already have meanings.

210. #210

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.270

     FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE > FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the analyst's desire should be mapped in relation to the slave (not the master) in the Hegelian dialectic, and then pivots to ground the ego ideal in the "single stroke" (einziger Zug) as a signifier in the field of the Other—distinguishing it from narcissistic identification and situating it as the kernel of the ego ideal within the field of desire.

     There are enigmas in identification, even for Freud himself. He seems to be surprised that the regression of love should take place so easily in terms of identification.

211. #211

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.272

     FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE > FROM INTERPRETATION TO THE TRANSFERENCE

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes two axes of identification—the ego ideal (narcissistic, sustaining the transference) and the objet a (topological, linked to the drive and separation)—and argues that the life/death drive distinction is valid only insofar as all sexual drives are articulated at the level of unconscious signification, where sex necessarily makes present death as a signifier.

     there is another function, which institutes an identification of a strangely different kind, and which is introduced by the process of separation.

212. #212

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.282

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > IN YOU MORE THAN YOU

     Theoretical move: Lacan redefines the "liquidation of the transference" not as dissolving the unconscious but as permanently liquidating the deception by which transference closes the unconscious — the deception being the narcissistic mirage in which the subject attempts to constitute itself as an object worthy of love for the Subject Supposed to Know, whose natural culmination Freud identifies as identification.

     Freud designates for us its natural culmination in the function known as identification.

213. #213

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.283

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

     Theoretical move: The passage pivots on the distinction between specular identification (grounded in the Ego Ideal as the point in the Other from which the subject sees itself) and the objet petit a as the paradoxical object that disrupts the deceptive mirroring of love in the transference, introducing mutilation and the gift-of-shit as the truth of analytic alienation.

     the identification in question is not specular, immediate identification. It is its support.

214. #214

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.286

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > IN YOU MORE THAN YOU

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of a surface folding back on itself (the cross-cap/Möbius-type structure) to argue that the line of self-intersection symbolises identification, and then moves to critique analyses that define their termination as identification with the analyst, insisting there is a "beyond" to identification that constitutes the true motive force of analysis.

     This line of intersection is for us what may symbolize the function of identification.

215. #215

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.287

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Freud's schema of hypnosis as structurally identical to his own topology of identification, demonstrating that what Freud calls "the object" in hypnosis is precisely the objet petit a in its coincidence with the ego ideal, and that this convergence is anchored in the gaze.

     defined by the relation and the distance of the objet petit a to the idealizing capital I of identification.

216. #216

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.288

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > IN YOU MORE THAN YOU

     Theoretical move: Lacan defines hypnosis structurally as the confusion of the ideal signifier (identification) with objet petit a, and then distinguishes analytic desire precisely as the operation that maintains the maximal distance between identification and a — thereby positioning the analyst as an "upside-down hypnotist" whose desire separates rather than fuses these poles, culminating in the traversal of fundamental fantasy where fantasy becomes drive.

     the fundamental mainspring of the analytic operation is the maintenance of the distance between the I—identification—and the a.

217. #217

     Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.289

     IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the training analysis is the only genuine analysis because it requires traversing the full loop of analytic experience (durcharbeiten), and that the analyst's desire—as an unknown x oriented against identification—is what enables the crossing of identification through the separation of the subject, ultimately making the drive present at the level of the unconscious; he further situates voice and gaze as the two privileged objects (objet a) whose modern technological proliferation illuminates the contemporary relation to science.

     the analyst's desire, which remains an x, tends in a direction that is the exact opposite of identification, that the crossing of the plane of identification is possible

218. #218

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.68

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 20 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the problem of identification by critiquing the topological naïveté of Euler circles and replacing them with a more rigorous topology (Klein bottle, Möbius surface, torus) in which the subject's structure is homologous to the mathematical derivation of number from zero — the signifier represents the subject for another signifier just as the zero grounds the series of whole numbers, making identification inseparable from the subject's constitutive lack.

     I must advance into the problem for psychoanalysis that is constituted by identification... the screen which separates us from our aim because it is unresolved

219. #219

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.13

     http://www.lacaninireland.com > **Seminar 2: Wednesday 9 December 1964**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the topology of surfaces (Möbius strip, cross-cap, torus) is not merely illustrative but structurally necessary for theorising the relationship of the signifier to the subject—specifically, that the signifier cannot signify itself except by reduplicated self-crossing, a property directly readable from the Möbius strip's topological behaviour.

     three years ago in a seminar on identification, it is not unrelated to what I am bringing you now, I was led to the necessity of a certain topology

220. #220

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.97

     **Seminar 8: Wednesday 3 February 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the optical model of the inverted bouquet to distinguish the non-specularisable status of objet petit a from the body-image and ideal ego, arguing that the impasses of identification at the end of analysis can only be resolved by orienting the work around the o-object rather than settling for identification to the analyst as a rectification of the ego ideal.

     the operation of identification, like the end of analysis, depends on an alternative between two terms which govern, which determine, the identifications of the ego, which are distinct without our being able to say that they are opposed, because they are not of the same order.

221. #221

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.139

     **Seminar 10: Wednesday 3 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the genesis of the subject is grounded in the logic of zero and one (lack and its filling), but that analytic experience always reveals an irreducible remainder—the objet petit a—which escapes both the demand-axis and the transference-axis, requiring topological figures (Klein bottle, Möbius strip) rather than Cartesian coordinates to capture the subject's divided structure and its relation to truth/castration.

     the goal of analysis is well and truly to be satisfied with the identification, as is said, of the subject to the analyst or whether, on the contrary, the irreducible otherness makes him reject him as other

222. #222

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.133

     **Seminar 10: Wednesday 3 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan rereads Freud's three forms of identification (incorporation, being/having alternation, hysteric's desire-to-desire) as demanding a tripartite structural framework—privation, frustration, castration—in which the status of the subject (oscillating between zero and one) must be posited prior to any account of demand, transference, or castration, thereby exposing the conceptual limitations of post-Freudian analytic practice.

     these three positions… recall how essential it is, the degree to which our experience obliges us, to confront, to distinguish the levels of its structures, the terms of privation, frustration and castration.

223. #223

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.26

     **Seminar 3 : Wednesday 16 December 1964**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the transmission of psychoanalytic experience cannot be grounded in ego-ideal identification or immanent developmental schemas (à la Piaget), but must be seized at the level of structure—specifically the structure of language as a topology that is irreducible to any instrumental or biunivocal logic, implicating the subject as such.

     the term identification, which is introduced here, for example, by presenting it as the end of the analytic experience, cannot fail at the same time to introduce a quite acute point of this problematic: at what level does this identification occur?

224. #224

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.62

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > (10) [Various noises] You see that we are in a police state!

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of the Klein bottle and its non-orientability to ground a structural account of the subject and language — specifically Identification — that supersedes the crude imaginary of Freud's second topology (ego-ideal, superego), while simultaneously critiquing Russell's theory of types/metalanguage as an evasion of the real problems of language and the subject.

     the nodal points in particular, and the one I am aiming at today, namely that of identification, it is in so far as such a schema allows us to do it, that we can try to tackle in all its generality

225. #225

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.129

     **Seminar 10: Wednesday 3 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reframes Freudian identification by grounding it in the subject's relation to lack and the zero/one dialectic (via Frege), arguing that primary identification precedes truth and is rooted in a mythical-incorporative relation to the father that cannot be reduced to either libidinal development or ego-psychological adaptation — thereby positioning identification as the analytic problem that displaces the theological impasse of knowing/willing.

     I will try to speak to you about identification; I mean the way in which, presenting itself to us in analytic experience, it poses its problem as contributing an essential step in what has taken shape, in the course of a long tradition called more or less correctly a philosophical tradition

226. #226

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.59

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > (10) [Various noises] You see that we are in a police state!

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the topological surface (specifically the Klein bottle) provides the most adequate schema for the divided subject constituted under language, and maps the three dimensions of Logical Time (instant of seeing, time to comprehend, moment to conclude) onto the subject's experience at the locus of the Other, showing how Demand circulates on this surface and requires an additional dimension—time as three-dimensional space—to escape indefinite self-enclosure.

     In any identification, there is what I called the instant of seeing, the time to comprehend and the moment to conclude.

227. #227

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.76

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 20 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the figure of Socrates to triangulate the voice as objet petit a, the structure of desire (including its link to the impossible), and the syllogism's topological deception, thereby re-framing the death drive not as a wish for death but as the structural condition that articulates desire, identification, demand, and transference around an irreducible gap.

     the great support of the master is not at all his desire, but his identifications, the principal one being that to the name of the master

228. #228

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.168

     **Seminar 12: Wednesday 17 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: By reading Plato's Symposium—specifically Alcibiades's pursuit of the hidden agalma in Socrates—Lacan establishes the dialectical structure of transference as desire for a concealed object that the Other does not possess, and concludes that the analyst's own identificatory position must be suspended within transference, collapsing the distinction between transference and counter-transference.

     everything, including the totality and the baggage of its rules, of its indications, of its doctrine and of its theory, ought always to be taken into account in what we call transference; namely, that there is in no case, whatever it may be, that should not be suspected, suspended by the analyst as participating for him in some unwarranted identification.

229. #229

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.41

     **Seminar 4: Wednesday 6 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychoanalysis has mapped out its clinical procedures without genuinely theorising them — transference, identification, the symptom as knot — and that Freud's founding discovery (the Signorelli forgetting) demonstrates that the unconscious operates at the level of signifying material (phonemes), not repressed content, grounding the claim that the subject is primordially determined by language/discourse rather than by any substantial soul or intentional consciousness.

     darkness progressively deepening in the measure that one advances towards the other term of the series, identification, that nothing is grasped, that nothing is theorised about an experience

230. #230

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.66

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > (10) [Various noises] You see that we are in a police state!

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Freudian slip (parapraxis) operates not through any diffuse or motor stumbling but through a phonematic substitution at the level of the proper name, where the Name-of-the-Father functions as the structural pivot linking desire (including the desire to kill the father and Oedipal desire) to signification — and proposes that the desire of the analyst, topologically defined in relation to identification, must be the axis of analytic treatment.

     the identification of the subject, and whatever may be the distance at which the relationship to the proper name is produced, the identification of the subject is involved, and it is here, it is at this level that we find the mainspring.

231. #231

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     **Seminar 4: Wednesday 6 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Freud's forgetting of "Signorelli" not merely as repression but as a structural disturbance of identification: the subject's point of self-regard (the unary trait, the "S" of the schema) is eclipsed at the precise moment of false identification with the Herr/Master, so that what persists in the forgetting is the gaze of the lost name's bearer—linking the mechanisms of memory/forgetting to the topology of the subject's desire and the function of the look.

     what he does not see is that the disturbance that is involved here is essentially linked to identification. This Herr that is involved… the doctor, the Herr, becomes Freud for once identified with his medical personage

232. #232

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.72

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 20 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of the Klein bottle—contrasted with the ordinary torus and the Euler circle—to demonstrate that the two halves of a predicative proposition (subject-term and predicate-term, e.g. "Socrates" / "is mortal") are topologically non-homogeneous, thereby grounding a structural critique of the classical syllogism and showing that the function of the proper name (nomination) cannot be treated as equivalent to membership in a universal class.

     the coherence that there is at this point if we define it, determine it as circumscribing the conditions, the favours, but also the ambiguities and thus the lures of identification

233. #233

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.177

     **Presentation by Monsieur Valabrega**

     Theoretical move: This seminar discussion, centered on Leclaire's case presentation, works through the theoretical status of the fundamental fantasy (Urphantasie) and its relation to signifier, myth, and body, while also elaborating the distinction between first name and family name as indexing the tension between the Imaginary and Symbolic registers of identification, and closing with a reading that connects transference, the Name-of-the-Father, obsessional structure, and anxiety.

     there always remains, it seems to me, a difference, notably at the level of identification between the George Philip's or the Jacques's or the Elianys and Lacans.

234. #234

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.103

     **Seminar 8: Wednesday 3 February 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the o-object (objet petit a) is the hiding place of the Other's desire, not merely a register of demand or transference identification, and that failing to distinguish desire from demand leads to a clinical impasse — illustrated through a case where the analyst remains captive to a decade-long identificatory grip because she reduces the symptom to oral demand rather than grasping the dimension of desire.

     everything that is played out around transference and the identifications, at once provisional and successfully refuted, that take their place there, will come to operate on the image i'(o)

235. #235

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.111

     **Seminar 9: Wednesday 24 February 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychoanalysis and logic share profound structural relationships, positioning psychoanalytic practice as articulating a "logic of lack" centred on the subject, the objet petit a, identification, and the unary trait — and announces Frege's arithmetic as the key external reference for establishing the logical status of the subject this year.

     at the level of different forms, that are more or less alluring, of identification, at the level of the paths through which we put to the test this function of identification, what I called the paths of deception or of transference.

236. #236

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.55

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan justifies his topological models (Klein bottle, Möbius strip, cross-cap, torus) as the necessary formal apparatus for grasping the subject as a surface, aligning this with Hegel's Phenomenology and its loop of Absolute Knowing, and connecting both to the analytic concept of the Subject Supposed to Know as the structural foundation of transference.

     the formulae which, issuing from my experience, are not entirely legible for all...under the rubric of identification

237. #237

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.55

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan justifies his use of topological models (Klein bottle, Möbius strip, torus, cross-cap) as theoretically necessary — not merely illustrative — by arguing that the subject must be conceived as a surface, and that this topological thinking finds its philosophical parallel in Hegel's Phenomenology, whose loop of absolute knowledge illuminates the analytic concept of the subject supposed to know and transference.

     the formulae which, issuing from my experience, are not entirely legible for all, in a certain style of research: precisely for example, the last time, those researches into the proper name where the vacillation... gave us the means of verifying... under the rubric of identification

238. #238

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.111

     **Seminar 9: Wednesday 24 February 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychoanalysis and logic share an intimate, essential relationship—psychoanalysis is itself a logic—and frames his ongoing project as establishing a "logic of lack" centred on the subject, the o-object, and the one/unary trait, with Frege's arithmetic as the privileged reference point for grounding the subjective constitution of the One.

     at the level of different forms, that are more or less alluring, of identification, at the level of the paths through which we put to the test this function of identification, what I called the paths of deception or of transference.

239. #239

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.97

     **Seminar 8: Wednesday 3 February 1965**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the end of analysis cannot be reduced to identification with the analyst (rectification of the ego ideal) but must reckon with the non-specularizable objet petit a, which centres specularization without itself being visible in the mirror — thereby positing two irreducible poles (ego ideal and objet a) that govern identificatory processes and determine the impasses of analytic experience.

     the operation of identification, like the end of analysis, depends on an alternative between two terms which govern, which determine, the identifications of the ego.

240. #240

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.68

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 20 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Euler's circles, while pedagogically seductive, conceal the essential topological complexity of identification; by drawing on mathematical logic's discovery that zero (lack) grounds the whole number series, he establishes a structural homology between the genesis of number and the movement of the subject from signifier to signifier, grounding identification in topology (the Klein bottle / Möbius surface) rather than in classical set-theoretic extension/comprehension.

     I must advance into the problem for psychoanalysis that is constituted by identification... the screen which separates us from our aim because it is unresolved

241. #241

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.194

     **Seminar 14: Wednesday 31 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: The passage stages a clinical-theoretical dispute about the relationship between the incest barrier, the Name of the Father, castration, and desire: Safouan argues against conflating the conscious/unconscious barrier with the incest barrier, insisting that the Name of the Father (not transgression) is what orients the subject toward the unconscious and grounds desire through castration, while Leclaire counters that orthodoxy itself is the danger in such argumentation.

     the extraction from the other, I mean from the female analysand, of every identification to the mother as omnipotence

242. #242

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.178

     **Presentation by Monsieur Valabrega**

     Theoretical move: This passage is a multi-voice clinical-theoretical discussion of Leclaire's case presentation, turning on the distinction between fantasy and signifier, the differential status of first name versus family name for subjectivity/singularity, the question of the empty unconscious, the body's encounter with the signifier, and the role of transference and the Name-of-the-Father in an obsessional patient's structure.

     there always remains, it seems to me, a difference, notably at the level of identification between the George Philip's or the Jacques's or the Elianys and Lacans.

243. #243

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.129

     **Seminar 10: Wednesday 3 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances identification as the central problematic of analytic experience by triangulating it across three registers: the mathematical logic of zero/one (Frege) as the structural model for the subject's appearing-disappearing pulsation; a critique of ego-psychology's pseudo-developmental account of identification (adaptation, secondary narcissism); and a close reading of Freud's Group Psychology chapter VII, where the primordial identification with the father (Einverleibung) is shown to be logically prior to—and irreducible by—the conscious/unconscious or will/knowledge dualisms inherited from Western philosophical-theological tradition.

     I will try to speak to you about identification; I mean the way in which, presenting itself to us in analytic experience, it poses its problem as contributing an essential step in what has taken shape, in the course of a long tradition called more or less correctly a philosophical tradition

244. #244

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.139

     **Seminar 10: Wednesday 3 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that subjective constitution is not exhausted by the demand-Other dyad: the primordial "genesis of one from zero" (filling of a void/lack) always leaves an irreducible residue — the objet petit a — which escapes both demand and transference, and whose topology is best captured by the cut on the Klein bottle yielding a Möbius strip, thereby grounding the legitimacy of analytic operation in confronting this remainder rather than identifying with the analyst.

     whether the goal of analysis is well and truly to be satisfied with the identification, as is said, of the subject to the analyst or whether, on the contrary, the irreducible otherness makes him reject him as other

245. #245

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.59

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > (10) [Various noises] You see that we are in a police state!

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that subjective structure is best apprehended topologically—via surfaces (Klein bottle, torus) rather than volume—and maps the three moments of Logical Time (instant of seeing, time to comprehend, moment to conclude) onto a three-dimensional temporal field structured by the Other, through which demand, transference, and identification are articulated as inscriptions on that surface.

     In any identification, there is what I called the instant of seeing, the time to comprehend and the moment to conclude.

246. #246

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.13

     http://www.lacaninireland.com > **Seminar 2: Wednesday 9 December 1964**

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that the relationship of the signifier to the subject requires a non-Euclidean topology — specifically the Möbius strip — to account for the impossibility of the signifier signifying itself except by self-reduplication, thereby grounding the gap between the signifier's functioning and the production of meaning in a topological structure rather than a linear or spherical spatial intuition.

     three years ago in a seminar on identification... I was led to the necessity of a certain topology

247. #247

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     **Seminar 4: Wednesday 6 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Freud's forgetting of "Signorelli," Lacan argues that the disturbance is not a matter of repression (Verdrängung) but of suppression (Unterdrückung) tied to identification: what is lost at the "hole" of the forgotten name is precisely the subject's point of self-identification (the unary trait, the gaze's origin), such that the emergent substitutions (Botticelli, Boltraffio) mark the place where the subject's desire and identification find themselves at a scotoma—linking the forgetting of a proper name to the structural function of the gaze and the lack that constitutes the subject in language.

     the disturbance that is involved here is essentially linked to identification. This Herr that is involved... the doctor, the Herr, becomes Freud for once identified with his medical personage

248. #248

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.275

     **Seminar 20: Wednesday 26 May 1965**

     Theoretical move: Through a student presentation tracing the Polyphemus myth across Greek and later texts, the seminar advances the theoretical argument that fantasy (phantasy) emerges as a structural element tied to signifying differentiation (the distinction between identity-negation and differential negation, *ouc* vs. *mais*), the problem of the one-eyed subject's inability to distinguish reflection from representation, and the relationship between the Letter/writing and arithmetic — all converging on the topology of fantasy as situated in a one-dimensional space of approach and flight.

     *Outis*, no one, is a proper name in the measure that one interprets it phonetically...Outis designates himself as being not one among others.

249. #249

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.103

     **Seminar 8: Wednesday 3 February 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses a clinical vignette of a borderline patient treated for ten years to argue that the analyst's error was reducing the patient's symptomatology to demand (and its oral regression) rather than locating the properly structural dimension of desire—specifically, that desire is constituted by its torsion toward the Other's desire, and that the objet petit a is the site where the desire of the Other dwells, not a relation between two egos.

     everything that is played out around transference and the identifications, at once provisional and successfully refuted, that take their place there, will come to operate on the image i'(o)

250. #250

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.66

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > (10) [Various noises] You see that we are in a police state!

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Freudian slip (parapraxis) is not merely a motor accident but a phonematic substitution that traces desire back to the Name-of-the-Father as the structural axis of both repression and identification, and that analysis must topologically define the desire of the analyst in relation to this pass through identification.

     the identification of the subject, and whatever may be the distance at which the relationship to the proper name is produced, the identification of the subject is involved, and it is here, it is at this level that we find the mainspring.

251. #251

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.26

     **Seminar 3 : Wednesday 16 December 1964**

     Theoretical move: Lacan dismantles psychological and Piagetian models of intelligence by showing that language is not the instrument of intelligence but its constitutive difficulty, and pivots to the claim that the subject is only a subject by being implicated in structure—thereby grounding analytic transmission not in ego-ideal identification but in the topology of the signifier.

     the term identification, which is introduced here, for example, by presenting it as the end of the analytic experience, cannot fail at the same time to introduce a quite acute point of this problematic: at what level does this identification occur?

252. #252

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.41

     **Seminar 4: Wednesday 6 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychoanalysis lacks genuine theoretical comprehension of its own experience (transference, identification, symptom), and locates the foundational discovery of the unconscious in Freud's analysis of the Signorelli forgetting — where what disappears is not a repressed content but phonemes, establishing that the unconscious operates at the level of signifying material rather than meaning.

     darkness progressively deepening in the measure that one advances towards the other term of the series, identification, that nothing is grasped, that nothing is theorised about an experience

253. #253

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.63

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > (10) [Various noises] You see that we are in a police state!

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that topological analysis of the Klein bottle/false torus grounds a theory of the 'structural unconscious' that surpasses Freud's second topology and its crudely imagistic concepts (ego-ideal, superego), while simultaneously demonstrating that language is non-orientable and cannot be mastered by any metalanguage—a critique directed at Russell's theory of types and its attempt to resolve the liar paradox through hierarchical meta-languages.

     the nodal points in particular, and the one I am aiming at today, namely that of identification, it is in so far as such a schema allows us to do it

254. #254

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.202

     **Seminar 14: Wednesday 31 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the proper name functions as a signifier that simultaneously marks, objectivises, and alienates the subject, while Leclaire's contribution extends this by proposing that the signifier is constitutively an antinomy—a pure connotation of opposition—whose bodily materialisation (the cupped hands gesture) reveals obsessional mastery as an attempt to hold together the irreducible split that is constitutive of the subject, with Objet petit a defined as precisely that which escapes this signifying antinomy.

     the effects of his identification to a girl and his fear of castration

255. #255

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.168

     **Seminar 12: Wednesday 17 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: By reading Alcibiades's encounter with Socrates in Plato's *Symposium* as the structural prototype of analytic transference, Lacan argues that the *agalma* (hidden treasure) organises desire-as-lack and that what analysts call 'counter-transference' is properly a moment of unwarranted identification internal to transference itself, thereby collapsing the counter-transference/transference distinction into a single analytic field.

     everything, including the totality and the baggage of its rules, of its indications, of its doctrine and of its theory, ought always to be taken into account in what we call transference; namely, that there is in no case, whatever it may be, that should not be suspected, suspended by the analyst as participating for him in some unwarranted identification.

256. #256

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.72

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 20 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan deploys the topology of the Klein bottle to demonstrate that identification is structurally non-homogeneous: the circuit of demand, when traced on a Klein bottle rather than a torus, is necessarily reflected and reversed, showing that the two halves of any predicative proposition ("all men" / "are mortal"; "Socrates" / "is mortal") occupy non-equivalent fields — thereby grounding a structural critique of classical syllogistic logic and revealing the irreducible function of the proper name and the speaking subject.

     circumscribing the conditions, the favours, but also the ambiguities and thus the lures of identification… the essential reversibility of the demand and what ensures… its own inversion

257. #257

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.133

     **Seminar 10: Wednesday 3 March 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Freud's three forms of identification (incorporation, being/having alternation, hysterical desire-to-desire) as a scaffold to argue that analytic experience cannot be exhausted by demand and transference alone, and that a tripartite structure of privation, frustration, and castration—grounded in a radical materialism of the body as libido—is required to make castration thinkable and to properly situate the subject in relation to the Other.

     nothing else that is involved, in what I introduced five years ago, or even more, by recalling how essential it is, the degree to which our experience obliges us, to confront, to distinguish the levels of its structures, the terms of privation, frustration and castration.

258. #258

     Seminar XII · Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.76

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 January 1965** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 20 January 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the figure of Socrates to articulate the structural relationship between Voice as objet petit a, Desire, Demand, Transference, and the Death Drive, arguing that the syllogism "Socrates is mortal / all men are mortal" is a topological lure whose deceptive diameter maps onto the function of transference as the link between identification, demand, and the indeterminate subject of the unconscious.

     the great support of the master is not at all his desire, but his identifications, the principal one being that to the name of the master

259. #259

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.237

     **Seminar 19: Wednesday 25 May 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Velázquez's Las Meninas as a structural diagram that maps the mirror stage's optical model—with its interplay of ideal ego, ego ideal, the gaze, and the Objet petit a—onto the monarchical scene, showing that the painting is not a representation but a "trap for the look" that captures the subject within fantasy, thereby demonstrating that the o-object is not specular and cannot be recovered in the mirror's field.

     of the specular identification on which the ego is based

260. #260

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.87

     Madame le Docteur Parisot

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Dragonetti's analysis of Dante's *Divine Comedy*, Lacan deploys the Narcissus myth and the figure of counterfeit money to theorize how the fraudulent (mis)recognition of the image-as-truth constitutes a fundamental structure of conscience and desire: the subject, captivated by its own reflection, mistakes the image of nothing for the real, such that malice (latent falsification) becomes the originary condition of every conscience.

     it is the one that man brings back entirely onto himself through the detour of an image, an image which feigns love for the other. It is a doubling of the absolute which is missing by a fictitious absolute.

261. #261

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.153

     **Seminar 14: Wednesday 20 April 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses a condensed summary of his previous seminar's work to argue that the being of the subject is constituted through a suture of lack—grounded in Frege's arithmetic, the Cartesian cogito's torsion, and the signifier's relation to negativity—and that only psychoanalysis, by engaging the symptom as a being of truth rather than bandaging the wound of the subject's split, can genuinely confront what science, philosophy, and social critique merely suture over.

     the unary trait, the mark of a primary identification which will function as ideal

262. #262

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.28

     I - JACQUES LACAN"S OBJECT: A RAPID REMINDER

     Theoretical move: The passage traces the theoretical development of the o-object (objet petit a) through Lacan's earliest graphs, arguing that (o) functions as the indispensable mediation between Subject and Other (via the Mirror Stage) and between Subject and Ego Ideal (via Schema R), while the Symbolic field alone provides the third term—the Name of the Father—that structures the whole process, inaccessible by any direct route.

     the couple of tensions between the systems of desires (iM) and the system of identifications (eI)

263. #263

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan

     E - The (o) object of lack, cause of desire

     Theoretical move: The passage theorises the objet petit a as the cause of desire by articulating its double register: it marks both the lack in the Other and the loss inscribed in the process of meaning, while its non-specularisable nature forces the barred subject to mis-identify with knowledge in order to cover over that constitutive loss.

     the subject thus identifies himself to knowledge, coming to the locus and the place of the loss which stimulates its promotion

264. #264

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan

     C - The o, object of desire

     Theoretical move: The passage theorises the objet petit a as the structural precipitate of a series of castrations (weaning, sphincter training, castration proper) that separates the subject from the maternal object, so that the object falls from the field of the Other to become the object of desire — a mediation that constitutes the subject precisely by exiling it from its own subjectivity, with fantasy as the structure that formalises this hollow inscription.

     I who am speaking identify you to the object which you yourself are lacking, says Lacan.

265. #265

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.196

     **Seminar 17: Wednesday 11 May 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the analyst's subjectivity is constitutively split, and that the institutional stabilisation of the "knower's" status (whether teacher, doctor, or analyst) tends to occlude this division through specular misrecognition; the analyst must maintain the divided position as a living practice rather than merely as theoretical knowledge, and perspective geometry is invoked to illustrate how the scopic drive and the objet petit a structure this irreducible split.

     from the simple fact of the functioning in which each one is identified to a certain nameable status, in this case that of being a knower, tends to put into the shadows the essential of the schize

266. #266

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.246

     **Seminar 20: Wednesday 1 June 1966**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the objet petit a is not the object of need's satisfaction but the structural cause of desire, arising from the relationship between the subject's demand and the Other's desire — and that the scopic field (the gaze) occupies a privileged position in this structure precisely because Freud founded the analytic position by excluding the look, making it a paradigmatic object that reveals the subject's foundational relationship to the Other.

     the representatives of a position which may be suspected of being true, they believe that they have a duty to embody (*donner corps*) by every other means than the ones which ought to flow from the strictest circumscribing of their function as representatives

267. #267

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.17

     **Seminar 3: Wednesday 15 December 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the topological and mathematical structures he introduces (the circle/disc, the cut, the Klein bottle, torus, etc.) are not merely illustrative but are themselves signifiers that constitute the subject through lack—the historical "obstacles" in mathematics (negative numbers, imaginaries) are not failures of intuition but structural moments of the subject's constitutive lack as produced by the signifier.

     if only in the predominance given to the function of the unary trait in identification so that I do not have to underline my agreement on this point.

268. #268

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.208

     **Seminar 17: Wednesday 11 May 1966**

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Velázquez's Las Meninas, Lacan dismantles standard interpretations (mirror-of-painter, king-and-queen as sitters) to argue that the painting's structural logic turns on the opposition window/mirror: the window as the painter's empty place of return versus the mirror as the royal couple's omniscient gaze—a gaze that functions like Descartes' God, guaranteeing the subject's world, and whose obverse is the television screen as the modern correlate of the relation between subject and objet petit a.

     we find ourselves before the position put forward by tellers of anecdotes, by Madam de Motteville, for example, namely, that the king and the queen were here... in the process of posing

269. #269

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.67

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 5 January 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses topological figures—the torus, the cross-cap, and the Möbius strip—to argue that the subject is constitutively divided (not primordially unified), and that the Objet petit a as "truth-value" is the irreducible object that makes possible the world of objects and the subject's relation to it; the disc produced by cutting the cross-cap stands in a position of necessary crossing with the Möbius strip, which in turn figures the divided subject.

     the torus gives us a particularly exemplary model to image the knot, the link, which exists between demand and desire. … that I already articulated the year of my seminar on Identification

270. #270

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.59

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 5 January 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reframes the objet petit a as a "waste object" of the Real that is constitutively invisible within the specular/imaginary order, and retroactively shows that his notation i(o) at the Mirror Stage already encoded this object at the heart of identificatory alienation — making the o-object the central thread running from the Mirror Stage through topology, and abolishing a naive epistemology grounded in perception-consciousness.

     I called it i(o) which is in short superfluous, a reduplication, the indication that there is in identification a fundamental alienation.

271. #271

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.25

     **Seminar 3: Wednesday 15 December 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Möbius strip provides the topological model for the divided subject: its essential property is that the cut IS the strip itself, meaning that subjectivity is constituted through division rather than unity. By showing how the cross-cap (projective plane) decomposes into a Möbius strip plus a spherical flap, and by introducing the torus and Klein bottle as further structural supports, Lacan grounds the relationships between subject, Objet petit a, demand, desire, and the Other in rigorous topological terms.

     In my seminar on identification, I showed the exemplary value that the torus has in linking, in a structurally dogmatisable way, the function of demand and that of desire

272. #272

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.167

     Mademoiselle Grazien

     Theoretical move: Lacan's seminar uses Jones's 1927 article on female sexuality as a platform to reconceptualise 'aphanisis' as the disappearance of desire, and to reframe the 'unseen man' in female homosexuality as a structural-symbolic operation involving identification and the phallic gaze, distinguishing Jones's proto-structural insights from his failure to organise them rigorously.

     the bond with the father is retained, but the object-relation is converted into an identification, ie, a penis complex is developed.

273. #273

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.67

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 5 January 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses topological figures—the torus, cross-cap, and Möbius strip—to demonstrate that the structure of the subject is necessarily split/divided, that the relation between demand and desire has a formal topology (at least two demands per desire and vice versa), and that the objet petit a functions as the 'truth-value' grounding the entire world of objects, thereby replacing any notion of primordial autoerotic unity with an irreducible openness at the heart of the subject.

     I will reproduce something that I already articulated the year of my seminar on Identification, that the torus gives us a particularly exemplary model to image the knot, the link, which exists between demand and desire.

274. #274

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.25

     **Seminar 3: Wednesday 15 December 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Möbius strip, Cross-cap (projective plane), torus, and Klein bottle are not mere illustrations but structural supports for the constitution of the divided subject: the cut that divides the Möbius strip IS the Möbius strip, making division constitutive of subjectivity rather than secondary to it, and thereby grounding the relationship between demand, desire, and the Other in rigorous topological terms.

     In my seminar on identification, I showed the exemplary value that the torus has in linking, in a structurally dogmatisable way, the function of demand and that of desire.

275. #275

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.237

     **Seminar 19: Wednesday 25 May 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Velázquez's *Las Meninas* as a visual matheme for the structural relationship between the gaze, the mirror, the Objet petit a, the Ideal Ego, and the field of the big Other: the painting is not a representation but a "trap for the look," and the royal couple's invisible gaze from the mirror-position enacts the function of the big Other in the narcissistic/specular relationship, while the o-object (objet petit a) remains irreducibly non-specular and therefore haunts the schema from outside it.

     the specular identification on which the ego is based

276. #276

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.230

     **Seminar 19: Wednesday 25 May 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the picture from the mirror by theorising the picture as the "representative of the representation" (Vorstellungsrepräsentanz): the scopic field of the picture inscribes both the Objet petit a and the division of the subject through projective topology, where the subject's "there" (Dasein) is not a presence but the gap/interval between two parallel planes — the picture-plane and the fantasy-window — in which the object a falls.

     these objects by the specular relationship with the ego identifications which people want to respect in it.

277. #277

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.59

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 5 January 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the objet petit a, as a "waste object" of the Real, is the hidden structural core of both identification (the ego as i(o)) and analytic practice, and that its invisibility is constitutive — tied to the illusory sovereignty of the visual/perceptual world — while topology (the cross-cap, torus) is introduced not as analogy but as the proper structure of reality itself.

     there is in identification a fundamental alienation. We miscognise (meconnaissons) ourselves to be ego.

278. #278

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.6

     **Seminar 2: Wednesday 8 December 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the subject must be rigorously understood as a "cut" (not a subjectivist position), and uses this to articulate the analyst's impossible-but-necessary position; he connects the Möbius strip and cross-cap as topological figures that make the constituting cut of the subject graspable, while distinguishing Wirklichkeit (realizable analytic relation) from Realität (the impossible Real that determines failure).

     four years ago, that I wrote on the blackboard, for my audience, a psychoanalytic one precisely, the year of my seminar on Identification

279. #279

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.17

     **Seminar 3: Wednesday 15 December 1965**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that topological figures (Klein bottle, projective plane, torus) and the function of the cut/writing are not mere intuitive aids but index the constitutive structural lack of the subject produced by the signifier — a lack whose diverse historical forms (negative number, imaginary number) are not reducible to intuitive impurity but to the signifier's constitution of the subject.

     the predominance given to the function of the unary trait in identification so that I do not have to underline my agreement on this point.

280. #280

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan

     C - The o, object of desire

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the objet petit a acquires its status as object of desire through a series of castrations that separate the subject from the primordial (m)Other, and that fantasy—as the constitutive structure of the subject—mediates the relation between objet a, the Ideal Ego, and the big Other by marking the subject only in absentia (imprinted in the hollow).

     a precocious form of identification of the ego to certain objects which operate both as love objects and objects of identification

281. #281

     Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.167

     Mademoiselle Grazien

     Theoretical move: By tracing Jones's concept of aphanisis and the structural logic of the "unseen man" in female homosexuality, Lacan argues that Jones — despite himself — arrives at structural (symbolic/metaphorical) references that he cannot properly organise, and that what Jones calls aphanisis corresponds clinically to the disappearance of desire, while the "unseen man" scenario turns on a symbolic operation in which the Gaze (the phallic eye of the father) is the true object of the ritual.

     the object-relation is converted into an identification, ie, a penis complex is developed... the subject who has abandoned the object, the father... Their external object-relations to other women is very imperfect for they represent, henceforth, only their own femininity through identification

282. #282

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.144

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 1 March 1967**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that sublimation and creation are structurally tied to identification with the feminine position—specifically to the logic of the "gift of what one does not have"—while masculine jouissance is defined by the fainting/aphanisis of the subject at the phallic moment, which in turn grounds the illusory "pure subjectivity" of the knowing subject and the denial of castration that constitutes idealist thinking.

     it is always through identification to the woman that sublimation produces the appearance of a creation

283. #283

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.112

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 11: Wednesday 15 February 1967**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that analytic knowledge "passes into the real" via the same mechanism as Verwerfung (foreclosure): what is rejected in the symbolic reappears in the real. He then grounds this in a rigorous reading of Freudian repetition (Wiederholungszwang), demonstrating that repetition is irreducible to the pleasure principle, necessarily entails a lost object, and constitutes the subject through a retroactive, non-reflexive logical structure rather than a simple return to sameness.

     this imposes on us again, to this end, the use of this unary trait, whose elective function we have recognised in connection with identification.

284. #284

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.21

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > A B C D.

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the logical paradox of the catalogue-of-catalogues (Russell's paradox) to demonstrate that the closure of any signifying chain necessarily generates an 'additional One' (Un en plus) — an uncountable surplus signifier that is nowhere in the chain yet designates the chain as a whole. This structure, illustrated through topology (the torus), the biblical Mene-Tekel-Parsin, and Mallarmé's absolute Book, grounds Lacan's theory of repetition: what repetition seeks is precisely what the mark effaces, because the first mark cannot be reduplicated without losing what it originally marked.

     this additional unit, uncountable as such, which is essential for a whole series of structures, which are precisely the ones on which I founded, since the year 1960, my whole operation (opératoire) of identification

285. #285

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.45

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 5: Wednesday 14 December 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the question "what links the Écrits?" to argue that the thread running through his work is the critique of the formula "Me, I am me" — the illusion of self-identical ego — and then pivots to introduce the Klein group as a structural (rather than identificatory) framework for approaching the subject, showing that structure, not intuitive ego-identity, is the proper ground for psychoanalytic questions.

     it is obviously not on the terrain of identification itself that the question can really be resolved... not simply limited to what in the subject is believed to be grasped under the identification me (moi), that we employ the reference to structure.

286. #286

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.194

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 19 April 1967**

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that there is no sexual relation by showing that the field between the small o (objet petit a) and the big Other is structured as a hole — not a unifying One — and that identification (ego ideal/ideal ego) operates in this gap; the Oedipus myth is then mobilised to demonstrate that jouissance itself is constitutively bound to rottenness and the hole, not to any unitive fullness.

     to be distinguished as being situated, and being situated as distinct from two other functions which are respectively that of repetition (we will put identification in the middle)

287. #287

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.53

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > KLEIN GROUP

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "One too many" signifier—structurally outside the signifying chain yet immanent to it—enables interpretation to function not as a mere meaning-effect (metaphor) but as a truth-effect; he then complicates the Cartesian cogito through material implication and the middle voice (diathesis) to show that the subject is constituted through the act of language rather than through the intuition of self-thinking.

     we are always on the edge, on the cutting edge of identification… around this invincible renaissance of the mirage of the identity of the subject

288. #288

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.21

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > A B C D.

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses set-theoretic paradoxes (Russell, catalogue of catalogues) and topological structures (torus, edge) to argue that the closure of a signifying chain necessarily generates an "additional One" (Un en plus) — a surplus signifier that is uncountable within the chain yet constitutes the very condition of repetition, lack, and writing; this is then grounded in the Mene Tekel Parsin narrative as an archaic theory of the subject.

     this additional unit, uncountable as such, which is essential for a whole series of structures, which are precisely the ones on which I founded, since the year 1960, my whole operation (opératoire) of identification.

289. #289

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.112

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 11: Wednesday 15 February 1967**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Freudian Wiederholungszwang constitutes the logical foundation of the subject, irreducible to the pleasure principle, by demonstrating that repetition produces a lost object retroactively—the originating situation is lost as origin by the very fact of being repeated—and that this structure, grounded in the unary trait, is what allows analytic knowledge to pass into the real via Verwerfung.

     This imposes on us again, to this end, the use of this unary trait, whose elective function we have recognised in connection with identification.

290. #290

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.44

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 5: Wednesday 14 December 1966**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the "Me, I am me" formula as the unifying thread of the Écrits—from the Mirror Stage to the Subversion of the Subject—to argue that naive ego-identity (moi = moi) is the obstacle to psychoanalytic inquiry, and then pivots to the Klein group as a formal structure that can approach questions of identity and negation from outside the field of intuitive identification.

     it is obviously not on the terrain of identification itself that the question can really be resolved. It is precisely by referring, not simply this question, but everything that it involves … that we employ the reference to structure.

291. #291

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.144

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 1 March 1967**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that sublimation and the illusion of pure subjectivity are gendered formations: feminine jouissance creates through lack (the vanishing phallus), while masculine jouissance generates the delusion of pure knowing by taking the 'minus something' of castration for zero—making the 'subject of knowledge' a male forgery founded on the denial of castration.

     it is always through identification to the woman that sublimation produces the appearance of a creation

292. #292

     Seminar XIV · The Logic of Phantasy · Jacques Lacan · p.194

     the smallest whole number which is not written on this board > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 19 April 1967**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "sexual relation" does not exist as a consistent dyadic unity — it is structurally a hole or gap between the small o and the big Other — and uses the cauldron metaphor (from Freud's Witz) to indict analytic theory for triply refusing to acknowledge this void; the Oedipus myth is recruited to demonstrate that accessing full jouissance covers over a foundational rottenness that truth cannot tolerate.

     what is especially - in the field that we are speaking about today, that of the dyad - to be distinguished ... as being situated, and being situated as distinct from two other functions which are respectively that of repetition (we will put identification in the middle) and finally the relation ... of the sexual dyad.

293. #293

     Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.148

     **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968** > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 13 March 1968** > **Seminar 14: Wednesday 20 March 1968**

     Theoretical move: The psychoanalytic act is theorised as the site where the subject-effect — constitutively divided — can 'return' as act; this requires the psychoanalyst to support the function of the objet petit a, and the psychoanalysand to accomplish, by an act, the realisation of castration and the forced alienating choice. The passage then situates this act-theory against the broader *bivium* of modern thought: the Cartesian cogito, which founds science by evacuating the subject, versus thinking that touches the subject-effect and thereby participates in the act (revolution as the paradigm case).

     how the psychoanalytic act can operate to bring about this something that we will call the identification of the psychoanalyst.

294. #294

     Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 4: Wednesday 6 December 1967**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses a triangular mapping of the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real as cardinal poles to locate the Barred Subject, the unary stroke (first Identification), and the objet petit a, arguing that Truth belongs to the Other/Symbolic, Jouissance to the Real, and Knowledge to the Imaginary—positioning the analyst in the void between them. He then reads Winnicott's transitional object as an inadvertent, incomplete articulation of the objet petit a, showing how object-relations theory approaches but fails to theorize the subject commanded by that object.

     this I of the unary stroke, the one we start from to see how, effectively, in the development of the mechanism, this mechanism of the incidence of the signifier in development, is produced, namely, the first Identification. We will put it also as a projection on the other side.

295. #295

     Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act · Jacques Lacan · p.111

     **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968**

     Theoretical move: The psychoanalytic act is theorised as a double language-effect in which the analysand's completion of analysis and the analyst's self-institution as psychoanalyst (the "pass") are structurally inseparable; the act's strangest consequence is that the subject who takes the analyst's position recognises himself as caused—in his division—by the rejected object (objet a), and the uninterrogated leap of this consecration is systematically concealed by analytic institutions that preserve an unquestioned Subject Supposed to Know.

     the insistence, as one might say, of the question of whether it proves that in the very measure of the duration of what I called consecration in the office, something fundamental becomes opaque

296. #296

     Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 4: Wednesday 6 December 1967**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Freudian primary process introduces jouissance as a constitutive dissatisfaction—not reducible to general psychology's satisfaction-seeking—and then maps the three registers (Symbolic, Imaginary, Real) onto a topological diagram, locating Truth at the Other/Symbolic pole, Jouissance at the Real pole, and Knowledge as an imaginary idealisation, with the barred Subject, the unary stroke (I), and objet petit a as the three projected points, using Winnicott's transitional object as a clinical illustration that points toward—but stops short of—the full concept of the objet petit a as the subject's first object of enjoyment.

     this I of the unary stroke, the one we start from to see how, effectively, in the development of the mechanism, this mechanism of the incidence of the signifier in development, is produced, namely, the first Identification.

297. #297

     Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act · Jacques Lacan · p.21

     **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1967.**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the psychoanalytic concept of the act (as distinct from mere motor activity) is constitutively signifying and only achieves its full status nachträglich, while simultaneously critiquing the reduction of transference to an intersubjective relation or a mere defensive concept by ego-psychological and American analytic orthodoxy.

     an acting in the form of a transformation of the analyst, by projection and introjection

298. #298

     Seminar XV · The Psychoanalytic Act · Jacques Lacan · p.148

     **THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN** > **Seminar 10: Wednesday 21 February 1968** > **Seminar 13: Wednesday 13 March 1968** > **Seminar 14: Wednesday 20 March 1968**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the psychoanalytic act is constitutively structured around the forced alienating choice (the 'cogito' quadrangle of "either I do not think, or I am not"), wherein the analyst supports the function of objet petit a so that the analysand can accomplish division-as-subject; this is contrasted with science (which forecloses the subject-effect after Descartes) and revolutionary thinking (which touches the subject-effect but cannot yet isolate its act), making the psychoanalytic act a privileged site for theorising what an act is as such.

     how the psychoanalytic act can operate to bring about this something that we will call the identification of the psychoanalyst.

299. #299

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.216

     Seminar 12: Wednesday 26 February 1969 > Seminar 13: Wednesday 5 March 1969

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the sexual relationship cannot be grasped through biological, logical, or identificatory schemas (active/passive, male/female, +/−), and that Freudian logic ultimately reduces sex to the formal mark of castration as constitutive lack; this requires distinguishing the Other (as terrain cleared of enjoyment, site of the unconscious structured like a language) from Das Ding (the intolerable imminence of jouissance/the neighbour), and poses the central question: is the Woman the locus of desire (the Other) or the locus of enjoyment (the Thing)?

     What is completely substituted for it, and especially in psychoanalysis. Namely, the phenomena of identification with a type described, on this occasion, as male or female.

300. #300

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.274

     Seminar 15: Wednesday 19 March 1969 > **Seminar 17: Wednesday 23 April 1969**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the structure of desire—grounded in the impossibility of the sexual relation and the barrier jouissance poses to Other jouissance—is homologous to formal logical flaws (the undecidable, Gödelian incompleteness), and that psychoanalytic stagnation consists in analysts becoming hypnotized by the patient's demand rather than dissolving the neurotic knot at its structural root.

     Every treatment of neurosis that limits itself to the exhaustion of the identifications of the subject, namely, very precisely of that by which he is reduced to the other, no treatment of these identifications... carries in itself any promise of resolution

301. #301

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.255

     Seminar 15: Wednesday 19 March 1969 > Seminar 16: Wednesday 26 March 1969

     Theoretical move: The neurotic's problem is located in the impossibility of integrating the objet petit a onto the imaginary plane alongside the narcissistic image; Lacan reframes primary narcissism as a retroactive illusion produced by secondary (imaginary) narcissistic capture, and positions the fantasy formula ($ ◇ a) at the level of sublimation—while diagnosing neurosis as a structural failure of sublimation.

     This introduces us to posing in a radical fashion, to posing again the whole question of what is involved in identification.

302. #302

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.308

     Seminar 18: Wednesday 30 April 1969 > Seminar 19: Wednesday 7 May 1969

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the anaclitic relation is structurally grounded in the operation of objet petit a as a masking of the Other, that perversion consists in returning o to the big Other, and that phobia reveals the true function of anxiety-objects: the substitution of a frightening signifier for the object of anxiety, marking the passage from the imaginary (narcissism) to the Symbolic field.

     everything that is of the order of this fact of exchange, of transitivism, of identification itself, all of this depends on the quite different relation that we posit as specular

303. #303

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.160

     Seminar 10: Wednesday 5 February 1969 > **Seminar 11: Wednesday 12 February 1969**

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances a distinction between truth-as-cause (which speaks but does not "tell the truth") and knowledge, anchoring this in a re-reading of Pascal's wager as a structural problem about the existence of the Other and the Real, while drawing an analogy between Marxist surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to illuminate the political stakes of psychoanalytic theory.

     with the help of this accessory the identification of those who presented themselves at that time as my pupils was supposed to be possible.

304. #304

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.157

     Seminar 10: Wednesday 5 February 1969

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes psychoanalytic discourse from philosophical discourse by insisting that the subject is primordially constituted as an effect of language (as 'o', the bet/zero), and uses a critical reading of Bergler's account of the superego to argue that Durcharbeitung (working-through) and the superego must be rethought together—not as a theatrical agency hitting the ego but as structurally related to identification, the ego ideal, and the limit-encounter in treatment.

     It is necessary all the same to distinguish the direction of identification as compared to other things. It is necessary to know whether identification in analysis is the goal or is the obstacle.

305. #305

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.295

     Seminar 18: Wednesday 30 April 1969

     Theoretical move: Lacan articulates the stain/gaze as the structuring lack in the field of vision that inserts vision into desire via the o-object, then leverages this to distinguish perversion (where objet a fills/masks the phallic lack, restoring o to the Other) from neurosis (where the signified of the barred Other reveals the conflictual articulation at the level of logic itself), with the neologism 'hommelle/famil' marking the transition between these clinical structures.

     It is what poses all the problems of identification. It is with it that it is necessary, at the level of neurosis, to finish off

306. #306

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.323

     Seminar 18: Wednesday 30 April 1969 > **Seminar 20: Wednesday 14 May 1969**

     Theoretical move: The passage advances the argument that the phallus functions as the "missing signifier" of the sexual relation precisely because sexual jouissance is outside the system of the subject — there is no subject of sexual enjoyment — and this impossibility is demonstrated by the untraceable, non-coupled nature of the male/female distinction at the level of the signifier.

     the chief, the leader, the key element in identification as he states it, becomes clearer in this perspective in that there is shown there the solution that makes possible the way in which the subject is strictly identified to o.

307. #307

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.135

     **Seminar 6: Wednesday 8 January 1969** > Seminar **9:** Wednesday **29** January **1969**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Fibonacci series and the golden ratio (φ/o) to demonstrate that the subject's division is irremediable: the relation between the subject of enjoyment and the subject constituted by the unary trait (1) can never collapse into self-identity (Hegelian Selbstbewusstsein), because the o (objet petit a as surplus-jouissance) is always already an effect of the inaugural mark and persists as an irreducible remainder across infinite repetition.

     the point of origin of identification… it is in neurosis from which effectively we started, that there appears… the most ungraspable form of the o-object.

308. #308

     Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.312

     Seminar 18: Wednesday 30 April 1969 > **Seminar 20: Wednesday 14 May 1969**

     Theoretical move: Lacan grounds the subject's structure in the logic of the signifier as self-othering: the signifier can only represent the subject for another signifier, and this irreducible alterity of the signifier to itself constitutes the big Other as necessarily incomplete (holed by objet petit a), while the subject is redefined as "what effaces its tracks," making the trace-effacement the originary operation from which the signifier and language emerge.

     It is from a particular point defined by what is called an identification that the subject is found to act, for example, to manifest a particular intention

309. #309

     Seminar XVII · The Other Side of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.121

     *[A porter appears]* > Seminar 7: Wednesday 18 February 1970

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Dora case to argue that Freud's substitution of the Oedipus complex for the truths offered by hysterical experience was a defensive idealization that masked the fundamental truth — audible in the hysteric's discourse — that the father/master is castrated from the start; this leads to a critique of the Oedipus myth as an unworkable, quasi-religious fiction that displaces the proper analytic relation between knowledge and truth.

     the first form of identification among the three that he isolates in the article that I mentioned earlier, the purely loving identification to the father - the father is love

310. #310

     Seminar XVII · The Other Side of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.116

     *[A porter appears]* > Seminar 7: Wednesday 18 February 1970

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Dora case to demonstrate the structural logic of the Discourse of the Hysteric: the hysteric maintains an alienated relation to the master-signifier (the idealised father) precisely by refusing to surrender knowledge and by orienting desire around the Other's enjoyment rather than her own, thereby unmasking the master's function while remaining in solidarity with it.

     this complex is the mark of the identification to an enjoyment in so far as it is that of the master

311. #311

     Seminar XVII · The Other Side of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.225

     X: *[On revolutionaries and the proletariat]* > Seminar 13: Wednesday 20 May 1970

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychoanalytic discourse reveals a single foundational affect—the subject's capture as object in discourse—and that this, rather than dialectical ontology, is the proper frame for rereading the Cartesian cogito, the Master Signifier, castration, and the impossibility of the sexual relation, all grounded in the unary trait as language's inaugural effect.

     The pivotal identification, the major identification is the unary trait, it is the being marked one. Before any promotion of any individual (étant), by virtue of a singular one, of what bears the mark, from this moment on, there re-emerges the language effect and the first affect.

312. #312

     Seminar XVII · The Other Side of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.105

     *[A porter appears]* > Seminar 7: Wednesday 18 February 1970

     Theoretical move: The Discourse of the Master is identified as the structural inverse of the Analytic Discourse (symmetry with respect to a point, not a line or plane), and the Master Signifier is shown to determine castration by transmitting itself toward the means of enjoyment (knowledge); this move simultaneously distinguishes the unconscious as a disjointed, mythical knowledge irreducible to scientific discourse.

     it is very precisely the identification to the father which is given as primary… primordially the father proves to be the one who presides over every first identification

313. #313

     Seminar XVIII · On a Discourse That Might Not Be a Semblance · Jacques Lacan · p.132

     **Seminar 6: Wednesday 17 March 1971** > *Lituraterre*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the neologism *lituraterre/litturaterrir* to theorise writing as furrowing (not metaphor), arguing that the Japanese writing system — where a character can be read in two distinct pronunciations — exemplifies how the letter, distinct from the sign, supports the signifier and divides the subject between writing-register and speech-register; this division exposes that there is no sexual relationship, only an "impossible 'it is written.'"

     it takes its support from a constellated heaven and not simply from the unary trait for its fundamental identification.

314. #314

     Seminar XVIII · On a Discourse That Might Not Be a Semblance · Jacques Lacan · p.26

     **Seminar [l:\Vednesday](file://l:/Vednesday) 13 January 1971** > **Seminar 2: Wednesday 20 January 1971**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that there is no sexual relationship because sexuality at the level of discourse is constituted as semblance, with surplus-jouissance (not biology) as its operative term; the phallus functions as the signifier of sexual enjoyment precisely insofar as it is identical with the Name of the Father, and the Oedipus myth is the discourse's necessary fiction for designating the real of an impossible enjoyment.

     That which, in a discourse, is addressed to the Other as a Thou, gives rise to an identification to something that one can call the human idol.

315. #315

     Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.144

     Seminar 9: Wednesday 10 May 1972

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the formula *Yad'lun* ("there is One") to disarticulate the One of mathematical existence from the One of individuality or class-attribute, arguing that set theory's separation of element-membership from universal predication is precisely what can ground the analyst's practice beyond the "witticism" level at which all discourse about the sexual relationship otherwise remains.

     the nervous system in an organism, was perhaps nothing other than what results from an identification to the prey

316. #316

     Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.10

     Seminar 1: Wednesday 8 December 1971

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the title "...Ou pire" as a vehicle for the claim that "there is no sexual relationship" — a truth that can only be half-said, such that any attempt to escape it produces something worse — and grounds this in a logical analysis of the empty place in language, the impossibility of metalanguage, and the introduction of the "not-all" as what exceeds Aristotelian quantification, thereby linking the structure of language to castration and sexuation.

     they only recognise one another as speaking beings, by rejecting this distinction by all sorts of identifications and it is commonplace in psychoanalysis to note that this is the major mainspring of the phases of every childhood.

317. #317

     Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.120

     Seminar 9: Wednesday 10 May 1972

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the unary trait (support of imaginary identification via the mirror stage) from the *Yad'lun* (there-is-One), while arguing that the Not-all grounds both the crowd and the question of Woman; he then re-situates the Subject Supposed to Know as a pleonasm pointing to the analyst's legitimate occupation of the position of semblance with respect to jouissance.

     imaginary identification operate by means of a symbolic mark

318. #318

     Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.92

     Seminar **6:** Wednesday **8** March 1972 > Seminar 7: Wednesday IS March 1972

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the neologism "Yad'lun" (there is One / il y a de l'Un) as a foundational ontological proposition, distinguishing the One as a structural feature of analytic discourse from both the Platonic dyadic Eros and the Freudian death-drive pairing, while showing that analytic experience turns on the analysand's encounter with division within the One rather than a fusion of two.

     The unary trait that in 1962 I believed I was able to extract from Freud who calls it einzig by translating it in that way... the einziger Zug, the second form of identification distinguished by Freud

319. #319

     Seminar XIX bis · The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst · Jacques Lacan · p.92

     The Psychoanalyst's Knowledge > I ASK YOU TO REFUSE WHAT I AM OFFERING YOU.

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the absence of the Other (as heteros) from the sexual relationship is not gendered but structural, grounded in the logic of Zero and One; the sexuation formulas are then developed through a critique of Aristotelian universals and quantification, establishing that the Universal (phallic function) requires the exception ('at-least-one') as its foundation, and that Eros as fusion toward the One is a dangerous mythological delusion with no analytic warrant.

     There is here only a requisite that I might describe as gratuitous. Nothing requires this 'at-least-one', except the unique chance... of the fact that something functions on the other side, but as an ideal point, as a possibility for all men to reach it by what? By identification.

320. #320

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.190

     B EYOND THE IMA GINARY , THE SYMBOLIC , OR FROM TH E LITTLE TO TH E BIG OTH ER > Odd or even? Beyond intersubjectivity

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the game of even and odd—first analysed through imaginary intersubjectivity (ego-mirroring, temporal oscillation between first, second, third positions) and then through the confrontation with the machine—to demonstrate that the symbolic order, not imaginary identification, is the proper ground for logical reasoning; the machine forces a passage from imaginary intersubjectivity to the combinatory of language, and the detour through Freud's random number shows that the unconscious is itself a symbolic machine where chance does not exist.

     No means of getting out of it by way of identification. One is thus from the start forced to take the path of language [langage], of the possible combinatory of the machine.

321. #321

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.166

     XII > The dream., of Irma's injection

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Freud's Irma dream to demonstrate that the dream's manifest content—read as a text, not as psychological expression—operates across imaginary and symbolic registers simultaneously, and that desire in the dream oscillates between preconscious and unconscious levels, with the horrifying vision of flesh/formlessness marking the point where anxiety erupts as the Real beneath the imaginary scene.

     the ego is the sum of the identifications of the subject, with all that that implies as to its radical contingency

322. #322

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.252

     XVIII > Introduction of the big Other

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the schema of the "wall of language" separating the subject (S) from the true big Other (A), distinguishing the imaginary plane of ego/specular other (a/a') from the symbolic plane, and arguing that the Other's capacity to lie—not merely to answer—constitutes the decisive proof of authentic intersubjectivity; this schema also serves as a critique of ego-psychology's imaginary reduction of analytic aims.

     those with whom he speaks are also those with whom he identifies.

323. #323

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.211

     B EYOND THE IMA GINARY , THE SYMBOLIC , OR FROM TH E LITTLE TO TH E BIG OTH ER > The Purloined Letter > M. GUENINCHAULT: The letter.

     Theoretical move: The Purloined Letter demonstrates that a letter (signifier) exists only in the dimension of truth, not reality — it cannot be found by those who believe only in the real/force (the police), while those who think symbolically can locate it; furthermore, possession of the letter structurally feminizes its holder and ultimately, a letter always reaches its destination, defining subjects by their position in the symbolic chain rather than any real qualities.

     The step-wise displacement of the characters is perfect... the minister is in what had been the Queen's position, the police are in that of the King

324. #324

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.217

     B EYOND THE IMA GINARY , THE SYMBOLIC , OR FROM TH E LITTLE TO TH E BIG OTH ER > XVII

     Theoretical move: By weaving together Wiederholungszwang (recast as "repetitive insistence" rather than "automatisme de répétition"), the common discourse of the unconscious, and the proximity of the ego to death, Lacan argues that the ego is not the centre of psychic life but a nodal point of alienation where the symbolic chain and imaginary reality intersect — and that the beyond of the pleasure principle is properly understood as the insistence of symbolic discourse, not organic inertia.

     the ego is shown as a mirage, a sum of identifications.

325. #325

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.188

     B EYOND THE IMA GINARY , THE SYMBOLIC , OR FROM TH E LITTLE TO TH E BIG OTH ER > Odd or even? Beyond intersubjectivity

     Theoretical move: Lacan locates an "ultimate quod" — a confrontation of the subject with the real beyond both imaginary and symbolic mediation — in privileged dream experiences (Irma, Wolfman), then uses Poe's "even and odd" game to introduce the cybernetic/intersubjective problem of identification with the Other's reasoning, staging the question of what kind of subject operates beyond the ego.

     'It is merely,' I said, 'an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent.'

326. #326

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.178

     XII > The dream of Irma's injection ( conclusion)

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the symbolic order—specifically the act of naming—is what rescues human perception from the endless imaginary oscillation between ego-unity and object-dissolution, and that the dream of Irma's injection enacts this very joint between the imaginary and the symbolic by revealing the acephalic subject at the limit of anxiety, at which point discourse (the trimethylamine formula) emerges as pure word, independent of meaning.

     the fanning out, the blossoming of the different identifications of the ego

327. #327

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.167

     XII > The dream., of Irma's injection

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Freud's dream of Irma's injection, Lacan argues that the unconscious is neither the ego of the dreamer nor any of his imaginary identifications, but a decentred symbolic structure ('Nemo') that only comes into being through the 'inmixing of subjects' in speech — the formula for trimethylamine functioning as oracle: the answer to the dream is that there is no word of the dream other than the nature of the symbolic itself.

     All these characters are significant, in that each of them is the site of an identification whereby the ego is formed.

328. #328

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     II > A materialist definition of the phenomenon of consciousness

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the ego is not the subject but a particular imaginary object within experience, and that the core of analytic technique requires intervening at the decentred, symbolic level of the subject's history/destiny rather than at the level of the ego — thereby distinguishing genuine analysis from suggestion and from Ego Psychology's reduction of the Freudian discovery.

     if he is himself a legitimate child, yes or no... It is in as much as the relations in which he is caught up are themselves brought to the level of symbolism, that the subject questions himself about himself.

329. #329

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.281

     XVIII > Introduction of the big Other > Sosiel

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the myth of Amphitryon (Sosie/double) and a critique of Fairbairn's clinical case to argue that analysis progresses not through ego-splitting observation but through speech addressed to the absolute Other, and that misrecognition of the imaginary register—treating imaginary drives as real—produces iatrogenic paranoia rather than cure.

     it is in so far as she identifies with the imaginary man that the penis takes on a symbolic value

330. #330

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.105

     THE FR EUDIAN SCHEMATA OF TH E P S YCHIC APP ARATUS > Introduction to the Entwurf > O. MANNO N I: After GaliIeo, though.

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes 'drive' (pulsion) from 'instinct' to frame the object relation not as a direct ego-world bond but as always already mediated by a narcissistic imaginary relation to the other, making the mirror-stage formation of the ego the primary condition for any objectification, and opens this toward psychosomatics via the scopic organ.

     The imaginary structuration of the ego forms around the specular image of the body itself, of the image of the other.

331. #331

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.106

     THE FR EUDIAN SCHEMATA OF TH E P S YCHIC APP ARATUS > Introduction to the Entwurf > (Dr Perrier arrives.)

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychosomatic phenomena belong to the register of the Real—not the object relation or narcissism—by distinguishing the narcissistic structure (which frames neurosis through ego-other reciprocity) from the properly autoerotic/intra-organic investments that lie beyond conceptual elaboration, and proposes the Real as the precise term for what psychosomatic relations engage.

     the possible identification with the other, the strict reciprocity between the ego and the other

332. #332

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.255

     XVIII > Introduction of the big Other

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques ego-psychology-style analytic technique—which aims at imaginary reconstitution of the ego through identification with the analyst's ego—and counter-proposes an analysis oriented toward the big Other, where the analyst functions as an empty mirror so that true speech can traverse the wall of language and the subject can assume its relations of transference with its real Others; "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" is re-read as the subject (S) being called to speak and enter into relation with the real Other.

     it is certain that the analyst can, by means of a specific interpretation of the resistances… succeed in projecting on to the patient the different characteristics of his analytical ego

333. #333

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.176

     XII > The dream of Irma's injection ( conclusion)

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the dream of Irma's injection is not merely an analysable object but Freud's own speech enacting his discovery, and uses this to stage the distinction between imaginary, real, and symbolic registers—culminating in a critique of ego-regression in favour of a 'spectral decomposition' of the ego as a series of imaginary identifications.

     the ego is made up of the series of identifications which represented an essential landmark for the subject, at each historical moment in his life

334. #334

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.246

     XVIII > Introduction of the big Other

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the fundamental distinction between the big Other (the radical alterity of speech and the symbolic) and the small other (the ego as imaginary counterpart), arguing that the subject's relation to satisfaction is always mediated by the Other — and uses the contrast between planets (pure reality, silenced by language) and speaking beings (constituted by the gap of desire) to demonstrate that language does not emerge from the real but retroactively forecloses it.

     To the extent that the being's identification with its pure and simple image takes effect, there isn't any room for change either, that is to say death.

335. #335

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.49

     II > III > Certainly not.

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the symbolic register is the indispensable framework for making sense of analytic experience—particularly transference—and that Freud's introduction of the death drive was a strategic move to preserve a dualism (symbolic vs. imaginary/naturalistic) that Lacan identifies as the autonomy of the symbolic; meanwhile, the ego is recast as fundamentally an imaginary function that operates only as symbol within the symbolic order.

     The ego, the imaginary function, intervenes in psychic life only as symbol. One makes use of the ego in the same way as the Bororo does the parrot. The Bororo says I am a parrot, we say I am me [moi].

336. #336

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.61

     II > A materialist definition of the phenomenon of consciousness

     Theoretical move: The Mirror Stage dialectic is radicalized through the automaton/machine model to show that the ego is constitutively imaginary and parasitic on an alien unity; only the intervention of the Symbolic Order — a 'third party' located in the unconscious — can break the impasse of dual imaginary rivalry and transform mere knowledge (connaissance) into recognition (reconnaissance).

     The paralytic … can only identify with his unity in a fascinated fashion, in the fundamental immobility whereby he finishes up corresponding to the gaze he is under.

337. #337

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.65

     v > IDOLATRY

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the subject's self-apprehension (self-counting) is not an operation of consciousness but belongs to the unconscious, and that consciousness is 'heterotopic' to the deduction of the subject—a structural third pole required alongside the imaginary dual relation and the symbolic regulation, but not privileged as the ground of subjectivity.

     each machine is intent on the point to which the other is going... That is where we had got to.

338. #338

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.274

     XVIII > Introduction of the big Other > Sosiel

     Theoretical move: Using the Amphitryon/Sosie myth as a clinical allegory, Lacan argues that the ego is constitutively alienated—always encountering its own reflected image rather than attaining desire or the Other—and that this imaginary capture is at its most binding in obsessional neurosis, where ego-reinforcement (as prescribed by ego psychology) only deepens the subject's dispossession.

     Mercury, by using force, obliges Sosie to abandon his identity, to renounce his own name... tu me alienabis numquam... you will never make me other.

339. #339

     Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.257

     XVIII > Introduction of the big Other > Objectified analysis

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques Fairbairn's object-relations reformulation of analysis as exemplary of a deeper theoretical error: the confusion of the real, imaginary, and symbolic registers under the single undifferentiated term 'object', which transforms analysis into an ego-remodelling exercise grounded in the specular/imaginary relation rather than the symbolic register of speech.

     every objectivation, with varying intensity. turns the analysis into a process of remodelling of the ego, on the model of the ego of the analyst.

340. #340

     Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.59

     **II** > Love and the signifier

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the signifier introduces the One into the world and that the subject is nothing but the effect that slides between signifiers; love aims at this subject as such, while desire is aroused by the sign of the subject — thereby distinguishing sign from signifier and articulating their differential relation to jouissance.

     This identification, which is produced in a ternary articulation, is grounded in the fact that in no case can two as such serve as a basis.

341. #341

     Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.15

     On Feminine Sexuality The Limits of Love and Knowledge > On jouissance

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sexual jouissance is structurally defined by an impasse—the impossibility of the sexual relationship—and uses topological concepts (compactness, open sets, finity) to articulate how phallic jouissance constitutes an obstacle to jouissance of the Other, while the Not-all marks the female pole's irreducible remainder. Love is revealed as narcissistic, and its object-like substance is in fact the objet petit a as remainder in desire.

     To enjoy a body (jouir d'un corps) when there are no more clothes leaves intact the question of what makes the One, that is, the question of identification. The parakeet identified with Picasso clothed (habillé).

342. #342

     Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.112

     Semina r **5:** Wednesday **16 January 1973**

     Theoretical move: Lacan revisits Logical Time to show that intersubjective inference is structured around the objet petit a (the third term that reduces the dyad to One + o), then pivots to distinguish sign from signifier, grounding the subject as an effect of the signifier chain; the second seminar session opens by establishing that the speaking being's needs are contaminated by an "other satisfaction" rooted in the unconscious structured like a language, which Lacan links retrospectively to the Ethics of Psychoanalysis and ultimately to the universals of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

     This function of identification which is produced in a ternary articulation, is one that is grounded on the fact, that in no case can two as such hold up as a support.

343. #343

     Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.9

     **Seminar 1: Wednesday 21 November 1972**

     Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar XX by grounding the impossibility of the sexual relation in the structural gap between jouissance (phallic enjoyissance) and love: love aims at making One but can only produce narcissistic identification, while enjoyment of the Other's body is neither necessary nor sufficient as a response to love, with the Not-all (pas-toute) marking woman's asymmetrical position relative to phallic jouissance.

     The parakeet identified with the clothed Picasso... To enjoy a body when there are no more clothes is something that leaves intact the question of what constitutes the One, namely, of identification.

344. #344

     Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.168

     **Introduction** > **Seminar 10: Tuesday 15 April 1975**

     Theoretical move: Lacan re-reads Freud's three identifications through the topology of the Borromean knot, arguing that the cartel's structure (three plus-one) is grounded in the Name-of-the-Father as the fourth term that knots the triskel of Symbolic, Imaginary and Real into a genuine Borromean bond, thereby locating identification, love, and desire at the topological heart of the social knot.

     There is no love except from the identification brought to bear on this fourth term, namely, the Name-of-the-Father.

345. #345

     Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.132

     **Introduction** > **Seminar 8: Tuesday 18 March 1975**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean Knot—understood through the topology of the torus—displaces the insoluble question of objectivity and grounds the three consistencies (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real) as irreducible, such that their triple points generate meaning, phallic jouissance, and the Name-of-the-Father respectively; identification is then reformulated as three distinct operations corresponding to the three registers of the knot's real Other.

     the triple identification as he puts it forward, I am formulating the way in which I define it: if there is a real Other, it is nowhere else than in the knot itself

346. #346

     Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.94

     **Seminar 5: Wednesday 20 January 1976** > Jacques Aubert's intervention > *Where now?*

     Theoretical move: Jacques Aubert's intervention traces Joyce's deployment of legitimacy, certitude, and the voice-effects of the signifier across his work, while Lacan closes by grounding these in the Borromean knot and its irreducible topological ambiguity (the indistinguishability of its rings without colouring), arguing that right/left orientation cannot be expressed in the Symbolic.

     An imaginary identification which, I believe, also situates the problem of the problematic of succession.

347. #347

     Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.3

     **Seminar 1: Wednesday 16 November 1976**

     Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar XXIV by proposing 'une-bévue' as a superior translation of the Unbewusst, then pivots to argue that the end of analysis is not identification with the analyst or the unconscious but rather 'knowing how to deal with one's symptom' — and grounds this clinical proposition in a topological account of the torus (and its inside-out inversion) as the proper model for the relationship between inside and outside, Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real.

     What relationship is there between this endo, this inside and what we usually call identification? It is this in short that, under this title which is as it were made for this particular occasion, this is what I would like to put under this title.

348. #348

     Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.12

     **Seminar 1: Wednesday 16 November 1976**

     Theoretical move: Lacan proposes that the three classical Freudian modes of identification (paternal, hysterical, and identification to a single/any trait) can be mapped topologically onto three distinct operations of turning the torus inside out, using cuts on the toric surface to produce what he calls the "torus-rod" — thereby grounding a typology of identification in topology rather than clinical description alone.

     How identify – because it is distinct – how identify hysterical identification, the so-called loving identification to the father and the identification that I would call neutral, the one which is neither one nor the other, which is the identification to a particular trait

349. #349

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.211

     **XV** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychoanalytic practice must advance beyond cataloguing instinctual meanings to recognize the autonomous action of the signifier, proposing that psychosis is not merely a disturbance at the level of meaning but stems from a structural deficiency at the level of the signifier itself — what will become the concept of Foreclosure.

     insofar as the subject is at once himself and the other two partners. This is what is meant by the term identification that you are always using.

350. #350

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.315

     **XXIII** > **XXIV** > **1**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that psychosis is structurally precipitated when a primordial signifier—the Name-of-the-Father—is foreclosed (verworfen) and thus cannot be received from the field of the Other, reducing the subject to a purely imaginary, dual relation of mutual destruction; this is contrasted with the authentic symbolic invocation that addresses "all the signifiers" constituting the subject, including symptoms.

     It's the relationship of identification with the other that is involved, but if we in fact guide one another in our reciprocal identification towards our desire, we shall necessarily encounter one another there.

351. #351

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.253

     **XVIII** > **An address: Freud in the century** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Freud's fundamental discovery is the primacy of the signifier — the structure of language — as the organizing principle of the unconscious, dreams, symptoms, and the ego, and that the compulsion to repeat is grounded in the insistence of speech; this is what post-Freudian ego psychology has systematically obscured.

     aggressiveness, considered as characteristic of the imaginary relationship with the other in which the ego constitutes itself through successive and superimposed identifications.

352. #352

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.55

     **II** > **Ill** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reworks Freud's grammatical analysis of paranoia by mapping each mode of negation of "I love him" onto a distinct structure of alienation (inverted, diverted, converted), while grounding the whole in the distinction between the big Other (symbolic, unknown) and the little other (imaginary, rival ego), arguing that psychosis must be understood through the structure of the subject's relation to an Other that speaks to him.

     delusions of jealousy, this identification with the other with a reversal of the sign of sexualization is in the foreground.

353. #353

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.233

     **XVII** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan grounds the Freudian mechanisms of condensation and displacement in the rhetorical distinction between metaphor and metonymy, arguing that the signifier's structural priority over the signified is the very starting-point of the Freudian discovery, and that psychosis results from a specific pathological relationship between the subject and the signifier/Other rather than from a merely aphasic mechanism.

     a later part of analytic investigation, one concerning identification and symbolism, is on the side of metaphor

354. #354

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     **II** > **Ill** > **1**

     Theoretical move: By shifting the analysis of psychosis from organogenetic/psychogenetic frameworks (both of which covertly presuppose a unifying subject-point) to the register of speech, Lacan establishes the structural distinction between the big Other (the absolute, unknown addressee of speech) and the little other (the object of discourse), and grounds the ego's constitutive alienation in the primacy of the other's desire as the origin of human objects.

     the initial synthesis of the ego is essentially an alter ego, it is alienated. The desiring human subject is constructed around a center which is the other insofar as he gives the subject his unity

355. #355

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.205

     **XIV** > **1**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the distinctiveness of the signifier — that it signifies nothing in itself — is the key to understanding both the structure of human subjectivity and the differential mechanism of neurosis versus psychosis: in neurosis the signifier remains enigmatic but operative, while in psychosis what has been foreclosed from the symbolic (Verwerfung) reappears in the real, with delusion marking the moment the initiative is attributed to the big Other as such.

     he did try to conquer the typically virile attitude, it was by means of imitation, of a latching on, following the example of one of his friends... he began to identify with him for a whole series of exercises.

356. #356

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.27

     **I** > **1**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the distinction between neurotic repression and psychotic repression is a matter of their different positions within the symbolic order, and that misrecognizing the autonomy of the symbolic—substituting imaginary recognition for symbolic exchange—is the structural cause of analytic-triggered psychosis; verbal hallucination is theorized as the moment the subject collapses into identification with the ego, speaking to itself in the real.

     in the psychotic subject on the other hand certain elementary phenomena... show us the subject completely identified either with his ego, with which he speaks, or with the ego assumed entirely along instrumental lines.

357. #357

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.218

     **XV** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychosis is constituted not by conflict or defense in the neurotic sense, but by a foundational hole at the level of the signifier — specifically the foreclosure of the paternal signifier — which collapses the entire signifying chain and forces the subject into imaginary compensation, with decompensation occurring when imaginary crutches can no longer substitute for the absent symbolic function.

     adopt compensation for it, at length, over the course of his life, through a series of purely conformist identifications with characters who will give him the feeling for what one has to do to be a man.

358. #358

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.187

     **XII** > **XIII** > **The hysteric's question (II):** *What is a woman?*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the dissymmetry of the Oedipus complex between the sexes is not anatomical but fundamentally symbolic: the absence of a signifier for the female sex forces the girl to take a detour through identification with the male (phallic) image, making the phallus as signifier — not as organ — the pivot of sexuation for both sexes; this symbolic lack is what structures neurosis and, specifically, the hysteric's question "What is a woman?"

     Dora's identification with Herr K. is what holds this situation together up until the neurotic decompensation.

359. #359

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.191

     **XII** > **XIII** > **The hysteric's question (II):** *What is a woman?*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that hysteria (in both men and women) revolves around the question of procreation—a question generated by the fact that the Symbolic cannot account for individual existence, birth, or death—and grounds this in a reading of Freud's early letters showing that repression originates in the failure of signifying inscriptions to carry over across developmental stages.

     When her question takes shape in the form of hysteria it's very easy for the woman to raise it by taking the shortest path, namely identification with the father.

360. #360

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.104

     **VII** > **1**

     Theoretical move: By moving from the clinical case of Dora's hysteria through a theory of narcissism to ethological examples (the stickleback), Lacan argues that the Mirror Stage constitutes the ego as an alienating, foreign image that structurally inscribes an aggressive tension ("either me or the other") into all imaginary relations—and that this same logic differentiates hysteria from psychosis via the criterion of language disturbance rather than persecution-like content.

     Dora in fact uses Herr K. as her ego, in that it is by means of him that she is effectively able to support her relationship with Frau K.

361. #361

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.231

     **XVII** > **1**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that in psychosis (particularly Schreber's hallucinations), the signifier's dimension of contiguity dominates over the dimension of similarity/metaphor, and that misrecognising the primordial mediating role of the signifier — reducing analysis to the signified — renders psychosis unintelligible; the hallucinatory phenomenon is precisely the grammatical-syntactic part of language imposed as an external reality, marking a failure of the metaphoric function.

     There's not a comparison but an identification. The dimension of metaphor must be less difficult for us to enter than for anyone else, provided that we recognize that what we usually call it is identification.

362. #362

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.174

     **XII** > **The hysteric's question**

     Theoretical move: By analyzing Schreber's delusion through the schema of analytic communication, Lacan argues that in psychosis the big Other—where being is realized through speech—is foreclosed, reducing discourse to an internal echo (automatism) that cannot resolve the subject's constitution; this structural difference from neurosis must be clarified before any technique for working with psychotics can be formulated.

     He must not identify with the subject, he must be dead enough not to be caught up in the imaginary relation.

363. #363

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.295

     **XXII** > **2**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the grammatical agreement (or non-agreement) of the verb in a relative clause with the *thou* of the main clause is not a matter of syntax alone but indexes the degree to which the subject is "caught up" in a signifying quilting point — the subject is constituted as such precisely through its implication in the signifier, as evidenced by the linguistic category of the middle voice.

     We live with a number of responses, in general highly suspect, to *what am I?* If *I am a father* has a sense, it's a problematic sense… among a thousand other identifications, *I am a Frenchman*

364. #364

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.185

     **XII** > **The hysteric's question** > **2**

     Theoretical move: Through a case of traumatic hysteria (Eisler's 1921 analysis), Lacan argues that hysterical symptoms are not reducible to imaginary or libidinal contents (anal, homosexual) but are formulations of a fundamentally symbolic question—"Am I a man or a woman? Am I capable of procreating?"—thereby grounding neurosis in the subject's failed symbolic identification with a sexed position, and linking this to Dora's question to establish a structural dissymmetry in the Oedipus complex between the sexes.

     For the woman, the realization of her sex is not accomplished in the Oedipus complex in a way symmetrical to that of the man's, not by identification with the mother, but on the contrary by identification with the paternal object.

365. #365

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.111

     **VII** > **1**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the purely imaginary relation — illustrated via Schreber's psychosis — is structurally doomed to collapse (collision/fragmentation) unless stabilized by the symbolic order, specifically the Name of the Father; Schreber's delusion is then read as a clinical demonstration of what happens when that symbolic anchoring fails, leaving the subject exposed to an unchecked imaginary invasion legible through the disintegration of identity, voice phenomena, and the decomposition of language itself.

     The subject himself is only a second copy of his own identity. At a particular moment he has the revelation that the previous year his own death had occurred.

366. #366

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.76

     **V**

     Theoretical move: By contrasting the neurotic's symptomatic language (where repression and the return of the repressed are two sides of one linguistic process) with the psychotic's open discourse, Lacan argues that psychosis cannot be reduced to the same mechanisms as neurosis; the analysis of Schreber's discourse must proceed through the three registers (symbolic/signifier, imaginary/meaning, real/discourse) toward an account of a specifically psychotic mechanism distinct from repression.

     whether we have before us a properly psychotic mechanism, one that would be imaginary and that would extend from the first hint of identification with and capture by the feminine image, to the blossoming of a world system

367. #367

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.345

     **XXV** > **INDE X**

     Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index for Seminar III (The Psychoses), listing key terms, proper names, and their page references across the seminar volume.

     identification feminine, in Schreber, 63 imaginary, 177-78, 302-03 and metaphor, 218 in mirror stage, 39-40 narcissistic, 92-93 and Oedipus complex, 198-99 in psychosis, 205 and speech, 282 symbolic, 171

368. #368

     Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.65

     **IV** > **"I've just been to the butcher's"**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the hallucinatory utterance "Sow!" to demonstrate that in paranoia the big Other is structurally excluded, so the subject's own message circulates between two small others (ego and mirror-counterpart) without ever reaching the dimension of true speech; this is contrasted with the diachronic/synchronic structure of language (Saussure) mapped onto the tripartite symbolic/imaginary/real.

     Sow! gives tit for tat, and one no longer knows whether the tit or the tat comes first.

369. #369

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.72

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE SIGNIFIER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT > THE DIALECTIC OF FRUSTRATION

     Theoretical move: The father's symbolic function intervenes to maintain a triadic distance between mother, child, and phallus, preventing the child from having to identify herself as the imaginary phallus—a failure of this distance opens the path toward fetishistic object-formation in pre-Oedipal relations.

     How is this distance maintained? Along what path? Through what identification and by what artifice?

370. #370

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.171

     THE FETISH OBJECT > IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PHALLUS

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes two ways the penis enters the imaginary economy — as compensatory oral object and as the phallus marking the mother's lack — and argues that access to the missing phallus as substitutable object requires passing through two successive phases: symbolic primal identification (superego formation) and narcissistic specular identification (mirror stage), the latter being the precondition for the subject's discovery of lack and its offer to substitute itself for the missing phallus.

     We have symbolic structuration and possible introjection, which as such is the most characteristic form of primal identification that Freud posited.

371. #371

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.161

     THE FETISH OBJECT > IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PHALLUS

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses transvestism as the symmetrical complement to fetishism to argue that garments and the scopic relation both function around the *lack* of the object rather than its presence, and extends this to the "girl = phallus" symbolic equation, showing that in each case the subject's position vis-à-vis the phallic object (bringing, giving, desiring, replacing) is structurally distinct—while the imaginary "almightiness" of the Other is ultimately grounded in, and sustained by, an irreducible lack.

     In transvestism the subject identifies with what lies behind the veil, with the object that lacks something.

372. #372

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.140

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > DORA AND THE YOUNG HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the structures of neurosis and perversion by mapping Dora's hysteria as a perpetual metaphorical self-positioning under shifting signifiers (Frau K. as her metaphor), while the young homosexual woman's perversion operates metonymically—pointing along the signifying chain to what lies beyond, namely the refused paternal phallus—and uses Lévi-Strauss's exchange theory to ground why woman is structurally reduced to object within the Law of symbolic exchange.

     Dora can readily accept that her father loves in her and through her what lies beyond, Frau K.

373. #373

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.354

     XVIII CIRCUITS > THE MOTHER'S DRAWERS AND THE FATHER'S SHORTCOMING

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads the case of Little Hans to show that the phobia's double signifiers (bite/fall) are not expressions of instinct or ambivalence in the classical sense, but purely signifying elements whose combinatory logic drives the mythical evolution through which Hans negotiates the father's shortcoming and the mother's desire for the phallus, culminating in a re-articulation of the structural roles in the Oedipus complex.

     we find little Hans identifying here with his mother, well, it's true, why not? But on one condition, which is that we would not understand why it is true

374. #374

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.406

     FAREWELL > FROM HANS-THE-FETISH TO LEONARDO-IN-THE-MIRROR

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that little Hans's case resolves not through a properly symbolised castration complex and superego formation, but through identification with the maternal phallus as Ego Ideal — a structurally atypical Oedipal outcome that positions Hans as a fetish-like object, leaving him on the margins of full phallic symbolisation and masculinity.

     this identification with the mother's desire as an imaginary desire… Nothing in the observation allows us at any moment to think that it is resolved otherwise than through this domination of the maternal phallus, in so far as Hans takes its place, identifies with it

375. #375

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.219

     ON THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX > ON THE CASTRATION COMPLEX

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the castration complex emerges as the necessary structural resolution to an impasse created when the child's real drive (the stirring of the real penis) disrupts the imaginary phallic luring game with the mother; the symbolic father's intervention re-orders what was an unresolvable imaginary deadlock, while the phobia (Little Hans) functions as a substitute signifier for the absent paternal term.

     He may identify with the mother, he may identify with the phallus, he may identify with the mother as bearer of the phallus

376. #376

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.157

     THE FETISH OBJECT > THE FUNCTION OF THE VEIL

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the fetish-veil (object as screen between subject and the absent maternal phallus) from the enveloping fetish as protective aegis (identification with the mother), and further shows how the Real's irruption precipitates acting-out on the imaginary plane—illustrated by reactional exhibitionism as a symbolic equivalence between phallus and child that cannot be symbolically assimilated.

     adhering to the position of identification with the mother in which she needs to be protected, right here, by this envelopment.

377. #377

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.453

     FAREWELL > AUSTRIA-HUNGARY > XXIII 'Me donnera sans femme une progéniture9 > XXIV From Hans-the-Fetish to Leonardo-in-the-Mirror

     Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index section of Seminar IV, listing names, concepts, and bibliographic references with page numbers; it contains no original theoretical argumentation.

     identification 67, 162-5, 170, 212, 422 primal 168 specular 169 see also mirror stage with analyst 19-20 with father 90, 102, 121, 122, 163-4, 212, 314

378. #378

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.214

     ON THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX > ON THE CASTRATION COMPLEX

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the imaginary, real, and symbolic registers of the father to argue that it is specifically the real father—not the imaginary one—who bears the decisive function in the castration complex, and that the child's fundamental position in relation to the mother is structured by the phallus as the object of maternal desire, establishing the ground from which the Oedipal drama must be understood.

     the whole dialectic of identification, and the whole dialectic of idealisation whereby the subject gains access to what is called identification with the father. All of this occurs on the level of the imaginary father.

379. #379

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.165

     THE FETISH OBJECT > IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PHALLUS

     Theoretical move: Lacan reframes the Freudian impasse between identification and object-choice by grounding both in the symbolic structure of the love relation and the oral drive, arguing against the Kleinian symmetry of introjection/projection and proposing instead that the drive always targets the real object as a part-object of the symbolic object—a dialectic of frustration and need that structures the constitution of the object from the outset.

     The notion of identification is present from the first in Freud's writing in a latent fashion, emerging from one moment to the next only to be disappear again.

380. #380

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.422

     FAREWELL > FROM HANS-THE-FETISH TO LEONARDO-IN-THE-MIRROR

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Freud's Leonardo essay to develop a structural account of sublimation as the displacement of the radical alterity of the absolute Other into an imaginary relation—a "relation of mirage"—distinguishing this from the ego-psychological account of de-instinctualisation, and situating it through Leonardo's peculiar relationship to Nature as a non-subjective other accessible via imaginary identification.

     He makes himself Nature's double and, as it were, co-creator... this other transforms the radicalness of the alterity of the absolute Other into something that is accessible through a certain imaginary identification.

381. #381

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.197

     ON THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Freudian equation Penis=Child as the pivot for a structural account of how the phallus slides from the imaginary to the real differently for boys and girls, arguing that the girl's entry into the Oedipus complex is paradoxically simpler because her path via lack leads directly to the father as real bearer of the phallus/child, while the boy faces the deeper difficulty of acceding to the symbolic father function.

     In the case of the boy, the Oedipus complex appears to be far more clearly destined to allow him to identify with his own sex. All in all, it arises in the ideal relationship, in the imaginary relationship with the father.

382. #382

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.25

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THEORISING THE LACK OF OBJECT > <span id="page-22-0"></span>THE THREE FORMS OF THE LACK OF OBJECT

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the object relation cannot be theorized without the phallus as a third-party element disrupting any dual (imaginary) subject-object relation, and that the dominant object-relations practice errs by reducing the analytic situation to an imaginary dyad (identification with the analyst's ego), as exemplified by its mishandling of obsessional neurosis.

     Identification with the object thus lies at the root of any relationship with the object... the furtherance of the analysis would be dragged, in a pure stripping back, towards an identification with the analyst's ego.

383. #383

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.125

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE PERVERSE WAYS OF DESIRE > A CHILD IS BEING BEATEN AND THE YOUNG HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the case of the young homosexual woman to demonstrate how perversion arises from a structural permutation within the Imaginary-Symbolic-Real triad: when the symbolic father intrudes into the imaginary plane as a real event (giving a child to the mother), the subject identifies with the paternal function and reorganises her desire around what the love-object lacks (the symbolic phallus), revealing that love is essentially a gift of what one does not have.

     a permutation has been produced whereby the symbolic father has passed over into the imaginary through the subject's identification with the function of the father.

384. #384

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.15

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THEORISING THE LACK OF OBJECT > <span id="page-7-0"></span>INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: Lacan contrasts his own structural account of the subject—grounded in the tension between pleasure principle and reality principle, the mirror stage, and the primacy of the unconscious—with the object-relations and ego-psychology tradition (traced through Abraham, 1924) that reduces analytic experience to ego-adaptation, subject-object reciprocity, and the ideal of a "genital" normalisation, arguing that this reduction is fundamentally foreign to Freud's point of departure.

     these relations are lived through in a reciprocity — the term is acceptable in this instance — of ambivalence between the subject's position and the partner's position

385. #385

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.155

     THE FETISH OBJECT > THE FUNCTION OF THE VEIL

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the fetish is constituted not through metaphor but through metonymy: it is the point in the symbolic-historical chain where the subject's history is arrested, functioning as a screen-memory that marks the onset of repression and veils the beyond-zone where the phallus-as-presence-absence should appear, while the subject's erotic life oscillates between imaginary identifications due to insufficient symbolization of the ternary (Oedipal) relationship.

     what we find in the relationships with the love object that organise this cycle for the fetishist is an alternation of identifications. There is an identification with the woman confronted with the destructive penis... conversely, there is the subject's identification with the imaginary phallus.

386. #386

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.82

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE SIGNIFIER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT > ON ANALYSIS AS BUNDLING AND THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the normal Oedipal resolution installs the subject symbolically as bearer of the phallus through a paternal pact, and that when this symbolic mediation fails, imaginary solutions (fetishism, perversion) emerge as substitute modes of binding the three imaginary objects — with fetishism paradigmatically analysed as an oscillating specular identification between mother and phallus that can never achieve symbolic stabilisation.

     there is the child's identification with the mother. On the basis of an imaginary displacement in relation to the maternal partner, the child will make the phallic choice in her place

387. #387

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.426

     FAREWELL > FROM HANS-THE-FETISH TO LEONARDO-IN-THE-MIRROR

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sublimation is structurally correlated with an inversion of the ego/other relation in the imaginary register, such that the very process of de-subjectification (sublimation) entails a fundamental self-forgetting—illustrated through Leonardo's mirror writing as the symptom of a radical alienation in which the subject addresses himself from the position of his own imaginary other.

     the relationship of identification between the ego and the other, the establishment of which appears to be crucial for an understanding of how identifications are constituted, and on the basis of which the subject's ego can move forward

388. #388

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.135

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > DORA AND THE YOUNG HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN

     Theoretical move: Lacan re-reads the Dora case to argue that hysteria's structural ambiguity is resolved only by positing that the phallus must be raised to the level of the symbolic gift — what is loved and sought is precisely what the father lacks and cannot give — thereby grounding the female subject's entry into the symbolic order in the gift of the phallus rather than in real need.

     Dora's ego and the ego alone has identified with a virile protagonist, who is Herr K., and that for her the men are so many possible crystallisations of her own ego.

389. #389

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.315

     XVIII CIRCUITS > PERMUTATIONS

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Little Hans case to argue that the Oedipus complex requires a tripling of the paternal function—real father, symbolic father (Freud as supra-father), and the Name-of-the-Father—wherein the child's phobia emerges from the mother's constitutive privation and is resolved through symbolic identification with the father, not mere genital maturation; simultaneously, Lacan critiques the psychoanalytic emphasis on 'frustration' as missing the deeper logic of the object as something that must be re-found through symbolic distancing.

     It is through him, through the identification with him, that little Hans ought to be able to find the normal path to the larger circuit onto which it is now time for him to pass.

390. #390

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.385

     XVIII CIRCUITS > 'ME DONNERA SANS FEMME UNE PROGÉNITURE'

     Theoretical move: Lacan formalises the Little Hans case by arguing that neurosis is a closed question articulated at the level of the subject's existence through the symbolic dimension, and that transference is the structural mechanism by which the analyst—as the locus of the big Other—progressively decrypts the organised discourse of neurosis through dialogue, with the paternal function necessarily doubled into a real father and a higher symbolic/witnessing father (Freud).

     the infamous identification of the boy with his mother, and I tell you now that the general fact of an identification such as this can only ever be made in relation to the overall movement of analytic progress.

391. #391

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.112

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE PERVERSE WAYS OF DESIRE > A CHILD IS BEING BEATEN AND THE YOUNG HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN

     Theoretical move: By closely reading Freud's "A Child is Being Beaten" through a structural lens, Lacan argues that perversion cannot be reduced to either a fixated partial drive or the eroticisation of defences, but must be understood via the multi-level subjective structure revealed in the three-stage transformation of fantasy — a structure that is fundamentally intersubjective and retroactively organised through symbolisation.

     There is the agent of the punishment, there is the one who undergoes it, and there is the subject. The one who is undergoing the punishment is someone other than the subject.

392. #392

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.55

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE SIGNIFIER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the child's symbolic positioning as phallus for the mother is not directly accessible to the child but requires symbolisation; phobia is distinguished from perverse solutions (fetishism, identificatory fusion) as a specifically symbolic appeal—a 'call for rescue'—that introduces the paternal third term to manage the gap opened by the mother-child-phallus triad.

     why, on the contrary, in certain highly particular forms of dependency in which anomalies can present with every appearance of normality, does the child also come to occupy the position of the phallus in relation to the mother?

393. #393

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.102

     Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE PERVERSE WAYS OF DESIRE > THE PRIMACY OF THE PHALLUS AND THE YOUNG HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Freud's case of the young homosexual woman to argue that the structure of desire is organized around lack: what is loved in the beloved is precisely what she lacks (the phallus/child as imaginary substitute), and that Freud's countertransference error lay in making a mere desire real by premature interpretation, collapsing the symbolic plane onto the imaginary.

     The subject identifies with this object and, as Freud lays out with precision in a footnote, this is equivalent to a kind of regression to narcissism.

394. #394

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.413

     FAREWELL > FROM HANS-THE-FETISH TO LEONARDO-IN-THE-MIRROR

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the closing lessons on Little Hans and the opening of the Leonardo da Vinci case to articulate how the doubling of the maternal figure structures the subject's final equilibrium, pivoting from the fetish-resolution of Hans to Freud's analysis of Leonardo's childhood memory as the screen-memory of a fantasy of fellatio and maternal identification.

     All of this hinges on one point, which is none other than the identification of the vulture with the mother herself, in so far as she would be the figure at the source of the imaginary intrusion.

395. #395

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.188

     THE FETISH OBJECT > THE PHALLUS AND THE UNFULFILLED MOTHER

     Theoretical move: The phallus functions as the master signifier of the symbolic order not by virtue of anatomy but because of its structural role as a constitutive lack: the mother's desire is organised around her lack of the phallus, and the entire pre-Oedipal dialectic—including the genesis of perversion—is a game about where the phallus is and is not, always necessarily veiled.

     Irrespective of the worth of some contributions on identification with the mother and identification with the object, and so on, what is essential is the relation to the phallus.

396. #396

     Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.295

     HOW MYTH IS ANALYSED > THE SIGNIFIER AND DER WITZ

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the phobia of little Hans arises not from any pre-established imaginary configuration but from the child's confrontation with the Real of turgescence/genital growth, which cannot be symbolised without the paternal function; the phobia's mythical proliferation reveals the fundamentally symbolic character of the passage through the Oedipus complex.

     the meaningful prospect and goal of perfect identification with the object of maternal love

397. #397

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.466

     **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT > **EXITING VIA THE SYMPTOM**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the resolution of obsessional and hysterical neurosis hinges on the subject's correct relationship to the phallus as a signifier—not identifying with it but assuming one's place relative to it—and that failures of analytic technique (reducing this to imaginary phallic identification) produce symptomatic persistence rather than cure, with the Freudian formula 'Wo Es war soll Ich werden' pointing toward the properly symbolic realization of desire.

     Like all subjects, the hysteric fixes the place of his ego by detouring via the image of the other... it's characteristic of the hysteric to obtain the place for desire in exactly the same way at the upper level.

398. #398

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.289

     **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **INSIGNIAS OF THE IDEAL**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the formation of the Ego Ideal has a fundamentally metaphorical structure: the father-object, desired and refused, is substituted for the subject and becomes a metaphor of the subject, thereby transforming desire and reorganising the subject's entire signifying history — a process categorically distinct from the prohibition of jouissance and the foreclosure-like rejection (*Verwerfung*) that produces melancholic states.

     This occurs in the identification with the object of desire in the case where the girl identifies with her father.

399. #399

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.278

     **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **INSIGNIAS OF THE IDEAL**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the phallus functions as a privileged "crossroads-signifier" through which desire must pass to gain recognition, and uses this to pivot into a differentiated account of ego-ideal versus ideal ego, showing that the ego-ideal structures intrasubjectivity as an intersubjective (signifier-governed) relation — a framework then deployed to analyze the masculinity complex and female homosexuality via Horney and Deutsch.

     the ego-ideal results from a late identification, that the latter is linked to the three-party relationship in the Oedipus complex, and that desire and rivalry, aggression and hostility mix with one another in a complex manner.

400. #400

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.352

     **THE DREAM BY THE BUTCHER'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE** > Then Freud makes this parenthesis: > A further parenthetical remark by Freud:

     Theoretical move: By working through the Dora case, Lacan demonstrates how hysteria is structurally defined by the subject's inability to advance beyond demand to desire: the hysteric's identification with the little other (Herr K.) functions as a substitute for the beyond-of-demand constituted by the paternal metaphor, and the collapse of this identification reveals the fundamental interchangeability—and fragility—of the two lines connecting desire and demand in the Graph of Desire.

     the identification is with a little other who is in a position to satisfy her desire. This is Herr K.

401. #401

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.440

     **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT > **THE CIRCUITS OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that psychoanalytic interpretation must be grounded in a two-circuit schema (symbolic and imaginary) in which the subject's articulation of need passes through the Other, and that this structure requires a "Other of the Other" — a meta-symbolic function — to account for how the subject can symbolize the locus of speech itself; this reframes debates about castration, penis envy, and aggressiveness within a broader topology of desire.

     where does it end? In the subject's identification with the Other, insofar as the latter articulates the distribution of the resources that are capable of responding to need.

402. #402

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.390

     **THE OBSESSIONAL AND HIS DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that obsessional desire is structured by dependence on the Other, and that fantasy must be redefined not as a blind imaginary image but as the imaginary captured in a particular use of signifiers—a scenario ($◇a) in which the subject is implicated—thereby distinguishing the obsessional's relation to desire from the hysteric's identificatory structure.

     Dora identifies with Herr K., Elizabeth von R. identifies with different characters in her family or in her entourage... for her, this someone becomes her other ego.

403. #403

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.201

     **THE THREE MOMENTS OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX (II)**

     Theoretical move: Lacan recasts male homosexuality not as an inverted Oedipus but as a triangulated identificatory solution: the child identifies with the mother's position (the one who holds the key to the law/phallus) precisely because the father's excessive love reveals his suspected castration, producing a structure in which the mother holds the fantasmatic paternal phallus—making the homosexual's structure triadic, not dual.

     The child has considered that the best way to cope is to identify with the mother, because the mother has not let herself be shaken. It is therefore in the position of the mother, thus defined, that he finds himself.

404. #404

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.317

     **SYMPTOMS AND THEIR MASKS**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that demand, constituted through the symbolic parenthesis of presence, generates two distinct formations along separate signifying lines: the ego-ideal (produced via the transformation of rejected demand through the mask) and the superego (produced along the line of signifying prohibition from the Other); the mask itself is constructed through dissatisfaction, and a privileged signifier—the phallus—will be required to unify the subject across the plurality of masks.

     we find the root of the identification that will take place successively, over the course of the child's development, with the mother first and then with the father. I am not saying that this step exhausts the question, but identification is precisely the correlate of this laughter.

405. #405

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.386

     **THE 'STILL WATERS RUN DEEP' DREAMS** > **THE OTHER'S DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan differentiates the hysteric's and obsessional's structural relations to desire: the hysteric locates desire in the Other's desire, while the obsessional's desire is constituted as an absolute condition that necessarily destroys the Other—making the obsessional's search for the object of desire self-defeating, since desire requires the Other's support as its very place.

     The hysteric finds support for her desire in her identification with the imaginary other.

406. #406

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.411

     **TRANSFERENCE AND SUGGESTION**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that transference and suggestion constitute two distinct but constantly confused lines in analytic practice, and that it is desire — as the field of the divided subject — which resists the collapse of transference into suggestion/demand; neurosis is reframed not as a quantitative deficit of desire but as a structural arrangement that maintains desire's articulation against this collapse.

     if identification is regressive, it's precisely insofar as the ambiguity between the line of transference and the line of suggestion remains permanent.

407. #407

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.164

     **FORECLOSURE OF THE NAME-OF -THE-FATHER** > **THE PATERNAL METAPHOR**

     Theoretical move: The passage advances the thesis that the father's function in the Oedipus complex is not grounded in any real, imaginary, or simply symbolic agency but is precisely a metaphor — a signifier substituted for the maternal signifier — and that this paternal metaphor is the unique mainspring through which the phallus emerges as the signified of desire, resolving the impasses of the Oedipus complex for both sexes.

     virility is assumed via identification with the father... the final identification can be established.

408. #408

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.376

     **THE 'STILL WATERS RUN DEEP' DREAMS** > **THE OTHER'S DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques Bouvet's object-relations account of obsessional neurosis—centred on imaginary phallic incorporation—by insisting the phallus must be understood as a signifier (part object properly so called), and he uses this critique as a springboard to re-articulate the Graph of Desire, showing that desire is constitutively located in a field *beyond* demand, irreducible to the passage of need through the defiles of demand.

     at the end it translates into something that always emerges more or less as an identification, that is, as the remodelling, as the transformation also and ultimately the passage of the subject's need through the defiles of demand.

409. #409

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.416

     **TRANSFERENCE AND SUGGESTION**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that obsessional neurosis requires interpretation at the level of castration-as-symbolic-law rather than suggestive identification with a part-object; mistaking the plane of demand for the plane of fantasy-identification constitutes a fundamental technical error whose visible symptom is the analyst's projecting passive homosexuality onto material (the bidet dream) that actually poses the question of the castration of the Other.

     Where I say 'an insignia', Freud speaks of a trait, a single trait, einziger Zug, it doesn't matter what, of someone else, someone with whom she can sense that there is the same problem of desire.

410. #410

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.177

     **THE THREE MOMENTS OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX (I)**

     Theoretical move: Lacan articulates the "nodal point" of the Oedipus complex as the moment when the subject must decide whether to accept the father's castration/privation of the mother, distinguishing two structural alternatives—"being or not being the phallus" (imaginary) versus "having or not having the phallus" (symbolic)—and shows how the father must intervene not merely as the bearer of the law de jure but as a real, graduated symbolic agent whose effective presence or deficit determines clinical structure.

     the child maintains its identification with the phallus... in correlation with this relationship, the child maintains its identification with the phallus

411. #411

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.222

     FROM IMAGE TO **SIGNIFIER - IN PLEASURE AND IN REALITY**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reframes perversion not as a category of instinct or tendency but as a signifying structure, arguing that the object in perversion is a "metonymic object" — produced by the sliding of signification beneath the signifying chain — and that the phallus names the imaginary pole that anchors the subject's radical identification with this always-fleeing object.

     The subject imaginarily identifies with it in a totally radical manner, not with this or that of its object functions that supposedly correspond to this or that partial tendency, as they say.

412. #412

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.157

     **FORECLOSURE OF THE NAME-OF -THE-FATHER** > **THE PATERNAL METAPHOR**

     Theoretical move: Lacan maps the historical evolution of debates around the Oedipus complex onto three structural poles—superego, reality, and ego-ideal—arguing that the function of the father and the Oedipus complex are co-extensive, and uses Melanie Klein's own findings to demonstrate that the paternal third term (the phallus) is irreducible even in supposedly pre-Oedipal imaginary relations, thus preparing the ground for his formal account of the paternal metaphor.

     what makes it the case that a man assumes the virile type and that a woman assumes a certain feminine type, recognizes herself as a woman and identifies with her functions as a woman.

413. #413

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.507

     **YOU ARE THE ONE** YOU HATE

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the obsessional's demand for death must be understood as a signifier mediated by the Oedipal horizon rather than reducible to Penisneid or castration, and that the Christian commandment 'love your neighbour as yourself' discloses—when formulated from the locus of the Other—the unconscious circuit in which the subject is the one who hates (demands the death of) itself, converging with Freud's 'Wo Es war, soll Ich werden'.

     It's not a moral commandment, since it's founded on identification.

414. #414

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.256

     THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHALLUS > **DESIRE AND JOUISSANCE**

     Theoretical move: By reading Genet's *The Balcony* as a clinical illustration, Lacan argues that the Ego Ideal is not the product of sublimation but of an eroticization of the symbolic function, and that perversion consists in enjoying the image of a signifying function; the drama's resolution—where the Chief of Police finally achieves symbolic recognition only through castration—demonstrates that accession to the order of the phallic symbol is inseparable from castration.

     Freud's discovery of the ego-ideal coincided more or less with the inauguration in Europe of this type of character who offers the political community a unique and easy identification, namely the dictator.

415. #415

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.472

     **YOU ARE THE ONE** YOU HATE

     Theoretical move: Lacan concludes Seminar V by arguing that the phallus signifier is pluripresent across all neurotic structures, that obsessional neurosis is characterised by a 'demand for death' that structurally destroys the very possibility of demand, and that guilt in neurosis is independent of any reference to the law — reversing the Pauline formula so that 'if God is dead, nothing is permitted.'

     an alternating process of successive regressions and identifications. The two alternate to the extent that when the subject encounters an identification when regressing he stops along the path of this regression.

416. #416

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.152

     **FORECLOSURE OF THE NAME-OF -THE-FATHER** > 157 And we also have this schema:

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the subject (S) is a structurally "dummy" fourth term outside the Oedipal triangle, dependent on the signifiers at the locus of the Other, and that the imaginary triangle—anchored by the ego/specular image, the mother-father-child triad, and the phallus as third point—maps how the paternal metaphor transforms the first (symbolic) triad into a second (imaginary) one; the phallus is thus the central object with which the subject imaginarily identifies, irreducible to a mere part-object.

     It eludes the fundamental function of the phallus, with which the subject imaginarily identifies himself, reducing it to the notion of part object.

417. #417

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.429

     **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques a clinical practice that reduces the treatment of obsessional neurosis to a two-person relation and ratifies the subject's fantasmatic production at the level of demand rather than desire, showing through detailed case analysis that such indoctrination—centered on the imaginary other and phallic fantasy—produces regression, acting out, and artificial transference effects rather than genuine analytic cure.

     the identification with the analyst, specified as such here, and which bears upon an analyst of the male sex, ensures by itself, quite simply, as if it were self-evident, access to genitality

418. #418

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.469

     **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT > **EXITING VIA THE SYMPTOM**

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques a clinical case in which treatment ends not in genuine symbolic resolution but in the imaginary absorption of the phallus—a mechanism already operative in obsessional neurosis—arguing that a "more successful symptom" is not an adequate terminus for analysis, since the symbolic place of the phallus-as-mediator between man and woman has not been worked through.

     treatments that end with an imaginary identification

419. #419

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.335

     **SIGNIFIER, BAR** AND PHALLUS

     Theoretical move: The phallus is constitutively barred from the signifying order — it is the signifier of the Other's desire — and this structural bar is what introduces castration for both sexes, producing asymmetrical dilemmas: the woman must *be* the phallus (identifying with it as desired object) while the man must *have* it, yet both are divided from their being by this impossible relation to the phallic signifier.

     The fact that she displays herself and offers herself as an object of desire identifies her in a latent and secret manner with the phallus and situates her being as subject as the desired phallus, the signifier of the Other's desire.

420. #420

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.406

     **TRANSFERENCE AND SUGGESTION**

     Theoretical move: Lacan maps Freud's three types of identification onto his schema of need/demand/desire, distinguishing the line of suggestion (identification with the Other's insignia along the demand axis) from the line of transference (a second, properly analytic articulation beyond demand), thereby reframing the transference/suggestion opposition as a topological split within the structure of demand itself.

     Freud distinguishes three types of identification. This tripartition is spelt out clearly, and one finds it summarized in a single paragraph in the text.

421. #421

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.519

     **EXPLANATION OF THESCHEMAS** > **Chapter xxvm You Are the One You Hate**

     Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index section listing key terms, page references, and cross-references for Seminar V concepts; it contains no independent theoretical argument.

     identilication 278,312,320 ... three forms of 402-4

422. #422

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.309

     **SYMPTOMS AND THEIR MASKS**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the original Freudian discovery of unconscious desire must be recovered against the distorting backdrop of contemporary psychoanalytic normativization: early Freudian interpretations derived their efficacy precisely from the absence of a pre-formed cultural framework, whereas today the analyst's intervention is weighted by an implicit normative horizon that obscures desire's essential link to its mask (symptom), making desire structurally unarticulable even when articulated.

     this would be to lead him down a path that would rest upon a number of circular arguments, I mean upon the idea that an ultimate solution can be given to his condition that would in the end allow him to become, let's use the word, identical to some object or other.

423. #423

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.493

     **EXPLANATION OF THESCHEMAS** > 3 **Concerning the Oedipus complex**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Oedipus complex is a structural prerequisite for theorizing pre-Oedipal configurations (perversion, neurosis, homosexuality), and uses the superimposition of two schemas—one imaginary, one intersubjective—to give 'identification' a precise topological meaning: the mutual substitution of subjects in speech.

     we can start to give meaning to the term 'identification' by superimposing the two triangles. Identification is Dante's condemned couple, who kiss on the mouth and each becomes the other.

424. #424

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.340

     **THE DREAM BY THE BUTCHER'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that desire must be distinguished from demand by showing how the subject's desire is fundamentally constituted through its encounter with the Other's desire, illustrated by Freud's analysis of the butcher's beautiful wife's dream, which serves as a paradigm case for the structure of unsatisfied/barred desire and the alienation of desire in the Other's speech.

     in demand, identification is with the object of a sentiment

425. #425

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.346

     **THE DREAM BY THE BUTCHER'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE** > Then Freud makes this parenthesis: > A further parenthetical remark by Freud:

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Freud's dream of the butcher's wife, Lacan argues that hysterical identification enacts the structural split between demand and desire: the hysteric's unsatisfied desire is not a deficiency but a necessary condition for constituting a real Other, and it is only through the Other's barred desire that the subject can recognize and encounter its own barred, castrated desire.

     identification is not simple imitation but assimilation on the basis of a similar aetiological pretension; it expresses a resemblance and is derived from a common element which remains in the unconscious.

426. #426

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.248

     THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHALLUS > **DESIRE AND JOUISSANCE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the subject's constitution depends on whether he is inscribed as a "desired child" within the symbolic triad (mother's desire, paternal signifier, subject), and uses the case of André Gide to demonstrate how the failure of this inscription produces perversion—where the ego-ideal is formed through an unconscious pathway rather than a conscious one—before pivoting to a theory of comedy as the representation of the subject's relationship to his own signifieds, culminating in the appearance of the phallus on the comic scene.

     The turning point at which the life of the young Gide regains, as it were, meaning and human constitution is to be located in a crucial moment of entification that we are given... This is his identification with his young female cousin.

427. #427

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.489

     **EXPLANATION OF THESCHEMAS** > **1 The signifying chain**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the signifying chain is the irreducible structural condition of human subjectivity, the unconscious, and intersubjectivity alike — and that failing to grasp this leads to technical deviations (e.g. Bouvet's imaginary-centric technique), which Schema L is designed to correct by showing how the vector from the Other to the subject must traverse, not reduce to, the imaginary relation.

     no system of identification is conceivable unless one brings into play something that is foreign to animal life, namely the signifying chain

428. #428

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.193

     **THE THREE MOMENTS OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX (II)**

     Theoretical move: Lacan elaborates the three logical moments of the Oedipus complex as a structural sequence centred on the metonymic circulation of the phallus as the object of the mother's desire, showing how the paternal prohibition interrupts the child's identification as the mother's metonymic object and thereby opens the path to the third, identificatory moment — grounding castration in the paternal metaphor rather than in any social teleology.

     Primitive identification, as we will call it in this case... consists in an exchange that brings the I of the subject to the place of the mother qua Other.

429. #429

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.237

     **FANTASY, BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reinterprets Freud's 'beyond the pleasure principle' by grounding it in the subject's fundamental relation to the signifying chain: the death drive, negative therapeutic reaction, and masochism are not biological inertia but expressions of the subject's refusal to constitute itself in signifiers, a refusal that paradoxically binds it ever more tightly to the chain.

     the rivalry with the other isn't all, since there is also an identification with the other... the relationship that binds the subject to every image of the other has a fundamentally ambiguous character

430. #430

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.326

     **SIGNIFIER, BAR** AND PHALLUS

     Theoretical move: The passage theorises the bar as the essential property of the signifier — its capacity to be cancelled/effaced — and uses this to ground the relationship between the signifying chain, the subject, desire, and the phallus; the Aufhebung of a non-signifying element (real or imaginary) is precisely what raises it to the dignity of a signifier, making the bar the hinge between signification, subjectivity, and the castration complex.

     What one calls identification emerges - this is a fact highlighted by experience - inasmuch as the subject presents himself within a world that is structured in this way in the position of Other. In the absence of satisfaction, a subject will identify with the subject who is able to accede to his demand.

431. #431

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.303

     **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **THE FORMULAS OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: The phallus is theorized as the privileged signifier that introduces the relationship to the little other (a) into the big Other (A) as the locus of speech, thereby barring the Other and implicating it in the dialectic of desire — a structural move that critiques Jones's reductive biologism (aphanisis as disappearance of desire) in favour of a properly symbolic account of the castration complex.

     The first indicates that narcissistic identification, namely what constitutes the subject's ego, takes place in a certain relationship... with the image of the other.

432. #432

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.162

     **FORECLOSURE OF THE NAME-OF -THE-FATHER** > **THE PATERNAL METAPHOR**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the standard "environmentalist" approach to paternal deficiency is structurally inadequate because it conflates the father's empirical presence/absence with his normativizing function in the complex; the proper analysis requires distinguishing the father's real, imaginary, and symbolic registers of intervention, particularly through the Oedipus complex's dual structure (direct and inverted) where castration operates first on the imaginary level before reaching the symbolic.

     It's insofar as the father is loved that the subject identifies with him and discovers the final solution to the Oedipus complex in a composite of amnesic repression and the acquisition within himself of this ideal term, owing to which he becomes the father.

433. #433

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.311

     **SYMPTOMS AND THEIR MASKS**

     Theoretical move: The symptom functions as a "mask" that presents desire in an ambiguous, closed form—addressed to nobody, articulated but not articulable—and this structure of masked desire, rooted in the hysterical identification with a situation of desire rather than a determinate object, necessitates that analytic interpretation always does more than mere recognition: it assigns an object to a desire that is fundamentally desire-for-lack-in-the-Other.

     An hysteric's identification is perfectly capable of subsisting, in a correlative manner, in several directions. Here it's twofold.

434. #434

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.452

     **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT > **THE CIRCUITS OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the obsessional's circuit of desire from the hysteric's by showing that the obsessional uses the signifying articulation of demand to annul the Other's desire through verbal destruction, yet paradoxically this same destructive signifying act sustains the Other's dimension — a structure illustrated by the French formula 'Tu es celui qui me tues', and contrasted with the illusory analytic 'solution' of imaginary identification.

     The very termination of the case by a euphoric identification, intoxicating for the subject, the description of which completely matches a masculine ideal located in the analyst, perhaps brings a change in the subject's equilibrium, but this is surely not a genuine response to the obsessional's question.

435. #435

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.467

     **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT > **THE CIRCUITS OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Oedipal structure is grounded in the castration complex as the effect of the signifier on the Other, which introduces a constitutive lack-in-being into the subject; this foundational lack then distributes into distinct clinical structures—symptom, hysteria, and obsession—each defined by a specific relationship to desire and its object.

     it's on that, as Freud formulates it, that hysterical identification is based. All hysterics respond to everything in the order of questions about desire as they currently arise for others

436. #436

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.217

     FROM IMAGE TO **SIGNIFIER - IN PLEASURE AND IN REALITY**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the illusory object cannot be adequately theorized through the imaginary alone but only through its function as a signifying element within a signifying chain — the mirror stage installs a double movement (imaginary identification with the body-image vs. symbolic identification along the ego-ideal axis) whose structural schema is necessary to distinguish identification from idealization, illusion from image, and to account for perversion, fetishism, and psychosis without reducing them to instinctual or genetic regression.

     Through his successive identifications along the segment m-E, he himself takes on the role of a series of signifiers, understand by that a series of hieroglyphs, types, forms and presentations

437. #437

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.246

     THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHALLUS > **DESIRE AND JOUISSANCE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes desire from jouissance by showing that desire is fundamentally structured by signifiers (not reducible to imaginary relations or need), and uses Joan Riviere's case of 'womanliness as masquerade' to demonstrate that the subject's relation to the phallus — whether as theft, mask, or sign of being — reveals the constitutive splitting of the subject between existence and signifying representation, grounding the unconscious.

     What do we have in this triangle with the three poles, E, P and M, which forms the position of the subject?

438. #438

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.292

     **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **THE FORMULAS OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques the "psychologizing" regression in post-Freudian theory (culminating in Klein's "early Oedipus complex") that reduces castration to a partial, aggressive drive, and counter-proposes that castration must be understood in its irreducibly signifying character: as the structural relation between desire and the mark, prior to any psychological or genetic narrative.

     identification occurs when a subject assumes signifiers characteristic of his relations with another includes and implies that the relations of desire between this subject and a third party will rise to the fore.

439. #439

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.299

     **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **THE FORMULAS OF DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces three formulas of desire (articulating desire's relations to narcissistic identification, demand/the Other, and the phallus as signifier) while arguing that Freud's *Totem and Taboo* discloses the constitutive link between desire and the signifier — specifically that the murder of the father marks the emergence of signifiers from death, and that human desire is irreducible to adaptation because the subject enjoys desiring itself.

     The egoic or narcissistic identification finds itself here in a particular relation with the function of desire.

440. #440

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.183

     **THE THREE MOMENTS OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX (I)**

     Theoretical move: Lacan schemas the Oedipus complex as three dialectical moments governed by the paternal metaphor: (1) the child identifies with the phallic object of the mother's desire, (2) the father intervenes imaginarily as depriver/castrator of the mother, and (3) the father reveals himself as *having* (not *being*) the phallus, enabling the boy's identification as ego-ideal and the decline of the complex—the entire movement being structurally a metaphor in which one signifier (the Name-of-the-Father) is pinned to another to produce a new signification.

     the child identifies in the mirror with the object of the mother's desire. This is the primitive phallic stage

441. #441

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.486

     **YOU ARE THE ONE** YOU HATE

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the telos of analytic work is the subject's full assumption of their own speech — a moment where the subject recognises itself in its own enunciation ('You are that'), failing which analysis produces only misrecognition and false pathways.

     'You are that.' This is what must in the end come to mark the subject's authentic and full assumption

442. #442

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.175

     **THE THREE MOMENTS OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX (I)**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Oedipus complex must be articulated through the structure of the paternal metaphor: the Name-of-the-Father substitutes for the mother in the signifying chain, and this symbolic operation is what installs the phallus as the privileged imaginary object mediating the child's relation to the mother's desire — establishing a metaphorical (not merely sociological or empirical) connection between the symbolic father and the imaginary phallus.

     we will see that there are very different states, cases and also stages where the child identifies with the phallus... he identifies with the phallus as hidden under the mother's clothing.

443. #443

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.281

     **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **INSIGNIAS OF THE IDEAL**

     Theoretical move: Lacan formalizes a minimal three-term schema for secondary identification: a libidinal object is transformed into a signifier that anchors the ego-ideal, while desire undergoes substitution via a third term (the rival/father), with the phallus functioning as the universal "lowest common denominator" — the metonymic pivot through which desire must pass in any signifying economy, regardless of sex.

     the singular, paradoxical result is that, from a certain angle and in a certain way, the child becomes this father. She doesn't really become the father, of course, she becomes the father as ego-ideal.

444. #444

     Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.324

     **SIGNIFIER, BAR** AND PHALLUS

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes desire from demand by insisting on desire's eccentricity to satisfaction and its irreducibility to any graspable meaning produced by signification, while simultaneously grounding the signifier's distinctive status in its capacity for self-substitution within the topological space of the big Other — a structure animals lack, since they possess no law organizing signifiers into a concatenated discourse.

     I return to the other element of the diptych I proposed last time, that is, the identificatory and idealizing function, insofar as it comes to depend on the dialectic of demand.

445. #445

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.231

     THE LAUGHTER OF THE IMMORTAL GODS

     Theoretical move: Lacan formalizes the quadripartite structure of subject-formation by showing that the specular couple [a-a'] is always already regulated by the more primitive dyad of the unconstituted subject and the mother-as-One, and that the birth of metaphor (substitution) is the moment at which the object is symbolized and desire properly emerges — yielding the formula of fantasy ($◇a) inscribed within a four-term schema.

     the mother serving as the earliest [primitive] ideal identification here, the first form of the One

446. #446

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.26

     CONSTRUCTING THE GRAPH

     Theoretical move: Lacan constructs the Graph of Desire by differentiating desire from need and will through psychoanalytic categories (drive, fantasy), then grounds subjectivity in the signifying chain, demonstrating that the graph's two levels articulate the subject's progressive capture in language and the emergence of the Other as such.

     what I have called the first or primal identification, I, occurs at the end of the intentional chain.

447. #447

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.237

     THE LAUGHTER OF THE IMMORTAL GODS

     Theoretical move: Through close reading of Sharpe's case, Lacan demonstrates that the patient's symptomatic objects (straps, car) are instances of objet petit a, while the real analytic impasse lies in the patient's structural impossibility of accepting the castrated Other—a deadlock Lacan locates in the analyst's own resistance to naming what the phallus as signifier does in the Other.

     if the patient has, for a long time, been someone who has been propped up by his identification with a woman

448. #448

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.240

     THE LAUGHTER OF THE IMMORTAL GODS

     Theoretical move: The fundamental mainspring of neurosis is not castration anxiety (fear of losing the phallus) but rather the refusal to allow the Other to be castrated; this is articulated through a rereading of the analysand's fantasy in terms of aphanisis as the active hiding/escamotage of the phallus rather than its disappearance.

     The position that he occupied at a moment in his childhood... identifications with his sister and the absence of a pram.

449. #449

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.255

     IMPOSSIBLE ACTION

     Theoretical move: By reading Hamlet against Oedipus through a quasi-algebraic comparison of homologous signifying threads, Lacan establishes that what is structurally decisive in Hamlet is the father's knowing of his own murder — the inversion of the Oedipal unknowing — and that Hamlet's inability to act is indexed by the derangement of his desire, whose barometer is his fantasy relation to Ophelia.

     people always go straight for superimposed identifications. The most convenient concepts being the least developed ones, God only knows where people will stop in their use of these identifications. In the final analysis, we are told that Claudius is a form of Hamlet.

450. #450

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.138

     DESIRE'S PHALLIC MEDIATION > But Freud adds the following:

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Freud's three-phase schema of "A Child Is Being Beaten" and the optics of the inverted bouquet to argue that the subject constitutes itself as barred subject ($) only by passing through a fantasmatic phase of near-abolition (primary masochism), and that the phallus functions as the mediating signifier through which desire is structured in the imaginary-symbolic interplay.

     what I initially referred to as the first identification with the Other in the radical sense - namely, identification with the Other's insignias. This is, in other words, the signifier capital I over little a.

451. #451

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.453

     THE EITHER/OR CONCERNING THE OBJECT

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques both a 1956 Parisian article that collapses the distinction between perverse fantasy and perversion, and the broader tradition of object-relations theory (Abraham, Ferenczi, Klein, Glover), arguing that the structural position of desire — defined by irreducible distance from the object — cannot be reduced to an individual developmental conquest of reality; perverse fantasy illuminates the very structure of unconscious fantasy as such.

     owing to an ideal and even idealizing identification with the analyst, who is considered in this case not as an object but as the prototype of a satisfying object-relation.

452. #452

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.334

     OPHELIA, THE OBJECT

     Theoretical move: Lacan maps three successive stages of Hamlet's relation to the object (Ophelia) — estrangement, rejection/externalization, and mourning/reconquest — arguing that Ophelia functions structurally as the phallus that the subject externalizes and rejects, and that the fantasy formula ($◇a) tilts toward ($◇φ) in a movement that illuminates das Unheimliche and the modern hero's constitutive displacement onto the other's time.

     Hamlet questioning the object, taking some distance with respect to the object as if to endeavor to identify it, something that has now become difficult for him

453. #453

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.43

     FURTHER EXPLANATION

     Theoretical move: Lacan reconstructs the Graph of Desire step by step to show how its two levels articulate the speaking subject's relation to the signifier, demonstrating that continuity and fragmentation on each trajectory encode the retroactive effect of the signifier's synchronic structure on need, demand, and intentionality, thereby distinguishing the repressed, desire, and the unconscious as three non-identical registers.

     the subject identifies with the Other to whom his demand is addressed [l'Autre de la demande], insofar as this Other is omnipotent... Capital I - at which the segment that begins from s(A), the signified of A, arrives - is what primary identification is based on.

454. #454

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.400

     IN THE FORM OF A CUT

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that initiation rites and bodily mutilation function as Objet petit a — indexical marks that orient desire toward a symbolic beyond ("being"), distinguishing this marking function from the specific negativizing (castrating) function of the phallus as signifier in the castration complex.

     to give those desires a function with which the subject's being can identify and by which it can be designated as such, he becoming thereby, as it were, a full-fledged man

455. #455

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.269

     THE DESIRE TRAP

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Hamlet is not merely another version of the father-hero myth but a uniquely articulated dramatic structure that maps the very framework of desire—showing how, under specific conditions, desire must be sought at mortal cost—and that the ghost's command pivots not on vengeance against Claudius but on the mother's desire, which is the essential, immediate object of the conflict.

     to be cast as Hamlet is, for a British actor, the crowning moment of his career... people talk about this or that actor's Hamlet. There are as many Hamlets as there are great actors.

456. #456

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.121

     INTRODUCING THE OBJECT OF DESIRE

     Theoretical move: The passage traces the movement from the animal's excremental territoriality through language's complication of the subject/object relation (use→exchange value), to the dialectic of desire: identification with the father fails to resolve desire's impasse, so the most general "solution" offered to the barred subject is narcissism, which structures fantasy by transferring the subject's anxiety onto object a, yielding the formula of the ego-ideal as i(a)/$ ◇ a/I.

     identification with the father - stems directly from the fact that the father is already a type... identification with the father's image is but a specific case of what we must now broach as being the most general solution of the subject/object relationship

457. #457

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.413

     CUT AND FANTASY

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "cut" (coupure) is the fundamental structural characteristic of the symbolic order and the locus of the subject's relation to being, and that works of art—exemplified by Hamlet—do not sublimate or imitate reality but structurally instantiate this cut, thereby making accessible, via fantasy, the subject's real as an unconscious speaking subject.

     a certain number of indicative and paradoxical elements...all kinds of questions about paternal, maternal, and sexual identifications arise

458. #458

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.163

     THE LITTLE COUGH AS A MESSAGE

     Theoretical move: The passage deploys the fantasy of self-annihilation (becoming an animal, barking) as the subject's way of articulating that in the presence of the Other he is "no one" — linking the structure of fantasy to the subject's fundamental identification and its necessary failure, using the Odysseus/Cyclops myth as the anchoring figure.

     To articulate the something that the subject is not, and that he cannot be, will direct us, as you shall see, toward the most fundamental of symbols involved in the subject's identification.

459. #459

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.355

     PHALLOPHANIES

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses a structural comparison of Hamlet and Oedipus to argue that mourning's disrupted rituals expose the same fundamental gap as the phallic signifier/castration, and that Hamlet stages a 'barred Other' [S(Ⱥ)] at its very outset rather than discovering it through the hero's deed—making Hamlet's Oedipal drama a specifically modern, 'distorted' form of the Untergang of the Oedipus complex in which the subject is paralysed by an unatonable debt rather than enacting the lustral rebirth of the law.

     we speak of the object with which the subject identifies in mourning, and which he can, so people say, reintegrate into his ego. What do we have here? Aren't there in fact two phases, which are not articulated and synchronized in psychoanalysis?

460. #460

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.395

     IN THE FORM OF A CUT

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the subject encounters itself only as gap or cut in the unconscious chain, and that objet petit a is constituted structurally as a cut: the pregenital objects (oral, anal), the phallus (castration complex), and delusion are three forms of a that share the formal property of coupure, functioning as signifying props that screen the hole in the unconscious chain for a barred subject who fundamentally misrecognises itself there.

     From a Greek, Aristotelian, perspective, the goal of knowing... was identification with the being that was known... What do we identify with at the end of the process of modern science?

461. #461

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.497

     TOWARD SUBLIMATION

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sublimation — defined as the form into which desire flows, reducible to the pure play of the signifier — and perversion together constitute a dialectical circuit that resists social normalization, and that the analyst's function is to occupy the position of desire's midwife by maintaining the "cut" as the privileged mode of psychoanalytic intervention.

     the perversion that is produced reflects, at the level of the logical subject, a protest against what the subject undergoes at the level of identification, insofar as identification is the relationship that establishes and organizes the norms of social stabilization of the different functions.

462. #462

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.459

     THE EITHER/OR CONCERNING THE OBJECT

     Theoretical move: By critically rereading Glover's adaptive theory of perversion and Klein's object-relations theory through the lens of the signifier, Lacan argues that the subject's primary structuring occurs at the level of signifying opposition (good/bad objects), not reality-testing; and that the bad internal object marks the precise point where the être/avoir (to be/to have) split institutes the subject's relation to an undemandable object — from which desire, irreducible to demand or need, emerges.

     the experience that defines the subject as an object of the first identification with the mother, and in particular with her insignias; this experience continues to have an assimilating value to the subject

463. #463

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.274

     THE DESIRE TRAP

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Hamlet's play-within-the-play scene not merely as a strategic ruse to expose Claudius but as Hamlet's attempt to construct a "fictional structure of truth" that orients him with respect to his own desire—and identifies the analyst's position with Hamlet's intermediary role of stepping "between" subject and desire.

     these insults are addressed both to the person designated by the context - namely, Claudius - and to Hamlet himself.

464. #464

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.427

     THE FUNCTION OF THE SUBJECTIVE SLIT IN PER VERSE FANTASIES

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that in fantasy, the subject is not where he desires but is represented at the very moment of his disappearance (aphanisis), and that this structure—the correlation between $ and a—is what defines fantasy as the prop of desire; he then uses the exhibitionist's fantasy to demonstrate that perverse desire requires the symbolic frame (the Other's complicity) rather than proximity to the object, thus distinguishing perverse from neurotic desire structure.

     tragedy ends with the name of the hero and with total identification of the hero. Hamlet is Hamlet… everything resolves there: Hamlet is definitively abolished in his desire.

465. #465

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.280

     THE DESIRE TRAP

     Theoretical move: The passage identifies a pivotal structural moment in Hamlet's trajectory: his sudden identification with his desire in its totality occurs precisely when the barred subject ($) enters into a specific relation with objet petit a — triggered by the scene at Ophelia's grave — resolving the long-flagging, "unfinishable" desire that had paralyzed him throughout.

     he suddenly identifies with something that for the very first time makes him find his desire in its totality.

466. #466

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.246

     IMPOSSIBLE ACTION

     Theoretical move: Lacan pivots from the structural analysis of Ella Sharpe's case (organised around the phallus as primal identification) to Hamlet as the privileged modern analogue of the Oedipus complex, arguing that Hamlet's "scruples of conscience" are a symptomatic, conscious formation whose unconscious correlate—structured around the castration complex and the opposition between being and having the phallus—remains to be articulated via Lacan's own concepts of desire.

     This led in the end to what was expressed as capital I, identification with the Ideal. I intentionally left unanswered what identification boiled down to in the first of the two equations I provided regarding the case.

467. #467

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.480

     THE FUNCTION OF SPLITTING\* IN PERVERSION

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that perversion inverts the neurotic's proof-structure: where the neurotic must ceaselessly prove desire's existence, the pervert takes it as given, and organises his entire construction around identifying with the phallus-as-object inside the mother, using the fetish or idol to symbolise the split between symbolic identification (I) and imaginary identification (i(a)) — a structure illustrated paradigmatically through male and female homosexuality and confirmed clinically via the anecdote of Gide's marble.

     In homosexuals, there is already a schism in the subject that is traced out between I - his first identificatory, symbolic accession to the primordial relationship with his mother - and his first Verwerfungen [foreclosures].

468. #468

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.345

     MOURNING AND DESIRE > What is Hamlet missing?

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Hamlet's identification with the "foil" (the mortal phallus) as the structural key to his desire, and then pivots to argue that mourning—illustrated by the cemetery scene—produces a hole in the Real that is the strict converse of Foreclosure: what is lost in reality irrupts as an absolute (impossible) object, and this opens onto a rearticulation of mourning via the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real rather than mere object-relations.

     In the end, Hamlet identifies with the fatal signifier in the course of his encounter with the other.

469. #469

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.112

     INTRODUCING THE OBJECT OF DESIRE

     Theoretical move: By testing the algorithm (S◇a) against the phenomenology of desire—through dream interpretation, clinical vignette, and Jones's concept of aphanisis—Lacan argues that desire is structurally alienated in a sign and thereby constitutively linked to lack, such that castration functions as the "final temperament" of the metonymic vanishing of desire's object.

     If he does not, he will find himself drawn into a series of identifications, alibis, and games of hide and seek that may take him very far afield.

470. #470

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.487

     TOWARD SUBLIMATION

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that contemporary psychoanalysis has deviated from Freud by subordinating desire to object-relations and moralizing normalization; against this, he insists that desire must be theorized as irreducible subjectivity constituted through the signifying chain, whereby drives are decomposed and separated from their sources — making desire a mapping of the subject with respect to the Other's desire, not a vital impulse.

     the entire development of the subjective drama of a neurosis is, after all is said and done, attributed to those identifications, as is the entire development of a perversion.

471. #471

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.303

     THE MOTHER'S DESIRE

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the graveyard scene in Hamlet to argue that mourning is the condition for the constitution of the object (objet petit a), and that Hamlet's sudden reactivation of desire occurs through a narcissistic identification with Laertes's grief — a mechanism that dissolves the distinction between hysterical and obsessional desire, pointing instead to a more fundamental structure of desire as such.

     he could not bear to see someone other than himself showing everyone what? Overflowing grief... The bravery of his grief did put me Into a tow'ring passion.

472. #472

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.367

     PHALLOPHANIES

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances a structural account of the phallus in Hamlet to show that the subject's radical position—at the level of deprivation—is to *not be* the phallus, and that the phallus, even when empirically real (Claudius), remains a shadow that cannot be struck without the total sacrifice of narcissistic attachment; this leads Lacan to coin "phallophanies" as the lightning-fast appearances of the phallus that momentarily expose the subject's desire in its truth.

     He perfectly incarnated the object whose function Freud outlines in his Massenpsychologie where he spells out how a mass of people becomes homogenized by way of identification with an object on the horizon, an object x, which is unlike any other.

473. #473

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.211

     SACRIFICING THE TABOO QUEEN

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses close reading of a clinical dream-text to argue that the phallus functions as a perpetually absent signifier whose structural elusiveness—not aggressive retaliation or castration anxiety in the ordinary sense—organises the neurotic subject's symptomatology, thereby critiquing hasty analytic interpretations that reduce the material to castration as cause rather than context.

     This involves less a body-to-body identification than an identification of the other's body with the penis.

474. #474

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.476

     THE FUNCTION OF SPLITTING\* IN PERVERSION

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the structural difference between neurotic and perverse desire turns on how each subject bears the "cut" or split: the neurotic indefinitely defers his desire in metonymic evasion, while the pervert directly identifies with the split/cut as constitutive of fantasy—a distinction Lacan develops by critiquing Gillespie's anatomical reduction of ego-splitting and by reading Gide's fantasies as evidence that perverse identification with the phallus operates differently from neurotic castration anxiety.

     splitting* presents itself in the form of an opposition between two identificatory sections, one of which is specifically linked to his narcissistic image of himself, i(a), and the other to his mother.

475. #475

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.225

     THE LAUGHTER OF THE IMMORTAL GODS

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the phallus functions as a signifier—not a privileged object (contra Klein)—and that the subject's relation to it is structured by the dialectic of being versus having: men "are not without having it" (castration enables possession of objects), while women "are without having it," making the sexual positions asymmetrical and irreducible to each other.

     the subject's entry into the dialectical movement that occurs during the unconscious development of various stages of identification, running from the earliest relationship with the mother to the beginnings of the Oedipus complex and of the Law.

476. #476

     Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.103

     THE DREAM ABOUT THE DEAD FATHER: "AS HE WISHED"

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Freud's dream of the dead father through the Graph of Desire to show that the mainspring of Verdrängung (repression) is not the suppression of a discovered content but the elision of a pure signifier (selon/nach), and that the formula of fantasy ($◇a) emerges as the structure by which the barred subject props itself against annihilation through identificatory fixation on the imaginary other.

     the question of what we call identification arises especially easily. We have no need for dialectic to think that there is some identificatory relationship between the subject and his own dreamlike fancies.

477. #477

     Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.106

     **VII**

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sublimation must be understood as the imaginary colonization of the field of das Ding, where fantasy elements ($ ◇ a) overlay the subject at the very point of das Ding; the gap between the narcissistically structured object and das Ding is precisely where the problem of sublimation is situated, and this gap is historically refracted through the shift from ancient emphasis on the drive to modern emphasis on the object.

     The problem of identification is linked to this psychological splitting, which places the subject in a state of dependence relative to an idealized, forced image of itself.

478. #478

     Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.316

     **XXIII**

     Theoretical move: Lacan articulates the Oedipus complex's decline and superego formation by distinguishing three registers of the father (real/castrating, imaginary/privating, symbolic/dead) and the corresponding mourning work, arguing that the superego ultimately expresses hatred toward the imaginary father-God who "handled things badly," while the paternal function is always and only the Name-of-the-Father — the dead father as myth — and desire is constituted through a necessary crossing of limits.

     if we are sufficiently cruel to ourselves to incorporate the father, it is perhaps because we have a lot to reproach this father with.

479. #479

     Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.204

     **XIV** > **XV** > The *jouissance* of transgression

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the barrier to jouissance and the resistance to the commandment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" are one and the same thing, not opposites — thereby locating the paradox of jouissance at the intersection of the Law, the death of God, the superego's aggression, and the imaginary identification with the other that grounds altruism.

     we are told that it is the identification with the other that arises at the extreme moment in one of our temptations... We retreat from what? From assaulting the image of the other, because it was the image on which we were formed as an ego.

480. #480

     Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.206

     **XIV** > **XV** > The *jouissance* of transgression

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Sade as a limit-figure who, in his theory (if not his fantasy), points toward the genuine space of the neighbor as irreducibly other — beyond imaginary capture by the fellow-man — and thereby illuminates the structure of jouissance, transgression, and the ethical problem of loving one's neighbor as oneself.

     the images of the self may frustrate our propulsion into that space... it is from this fellow as such that the misrecognitions which define me as a self are born

481. #481

     Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.170

     **XI** > **XII** > **A critique of Bernfeld** > **A CURIOUS CASE OF SUBLIMATION**

     Theoretical move: By reading Arnaud Daniel's scatological poem within courtly love, Lacan demonstrates that sublimation does not require the disappearance of the sexual object but instead involves the construction of a refined symbolic apparatus around a cruel, empty Thing — the Lady's very crudity is what unveils Das Ding at the heart of sublimation.

     I stated that the problem we face is that of establishing the link between sublimation and identification.

482. #482

     Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.119

     **VIII**

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the defining formula of sublimation — "raising an object to the dignity of the Thing" — as the key to understanding how the drive finds satisfaction beyond its aim, and he illustrates this via courtly love and a concrete fable of collecting, arguing that sublimation reveals the relationship of the drive to das Ding as distinct from any imaginary object.

     idealization involves an identification of the subject with the object, whereas sublimation is something quite different.

483. #483

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.142

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **FROM** *E P IS T É M E* **TO** *M Y T H O U S* > <span id="page-136-0"></span>**EXIT FROM THE ULTRA-W ORLD**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Diotima's speech in the Symposium as staging a fundamental slippage between two functions of beauty—beauty as a veil over the desire for death (between-two-deaths) and beauty as the metonymic object of desire—arguing that this movement illustrates the metonymic structure of desire itself, while also pointing toward what is missed when Plato is read as reducing Eros to narcissistic self-perfection (identification with the ideal ego).

     this progression or ascesis involves a transformation or becoming of the subject: a final identification with what is supremely lovable.

484. #484

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.441

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > <span id="page-411-0"></span>**Translator's Endnotes** > **Chapter XXVI - "A Dream of a Shadow Is Man"**

     Theoretical move: This passage consists entirely of translator's endnotes for Seminar VIII, Chapter XXVI, providing philological clarifications, textual variants, bibliographic references, and explanations of Lacan's optical schema and identification formulas. It is non-substantive as theoretical argumentation, serving only as editorial apparatus.

     Narcissistic identification, involving the ideal ego, is enveloping or all-encompassing; non-narcissistic (or symbolic) identification, involving the ego-ideal, is not enveloping or all-encompassing, relying as it does on a single trait.

485. #485

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > ⁴⁶⁷ **Editor's Notes** > **Notes to the Second Edition**

     Theoretical move: This passage is a non-substantive index excerpt from the editor's notes to a second edition of Seminar VIII, listing page references for key Lacanian and philosophical concepts without advancing any theoretical argument.

     identification 355-6

486. #486

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.259

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **D E M A N D A N D DESIRE IN THE ORAL A N D A N A L STAGES** > **THE SYMBOL Φ**

     Theoretical move: The passage theorises the structural difference between hysterical and obsessional fantasy through their respective relations to the phallic signifier Φ: the hysteric sacrifices her own desire to keep the Other in possession of the key to her mystery, while the obsessive attacks the imaginary phallus in the Other (what Lacan calls "phallophany") to manage the unbearable real presence of desire — revealing that handling the symbolic function of Φ, not working through imaginary castration, is the genuine analytic task.

     identifying with love's drama, she endeavors to reanimate, reinsure, recomplete anew, or repair that Other.

487. #487

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.258

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **D E M A N D A N D DESIRE IN THE ORAL A N D A N A L STAGES** > **THE SYMBOL Φ**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the phallus (Φ) functions as a privileged signifier that uniquely arrests the infinite deferral of the signifying chain, and that the subject's unnameable relation to this signifier of desire is what organizes both fantasy and the symptomatic effects of the castration complex — exemplified through a reading of Dora's hysteria as a game of substituting imaginary φ where the veiled Φ is sought.

     I have taught you to follow the pathways and detours of the labyrinth of complex identifications by which Dora finds herself confronted with something.

488. #488

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.367

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **CAPITAL I A N D LITTLE** *a* > **IDENTIFICATION VIA** *"E IN E IN Z IG E R Z U G* **"**

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses his optical schema to argue that the emergence of the ego-ideal and ideal ego requires the intervention of the big Other (capital O) as a third term that exceeds the dyadic, radically imaginary and destructive conflict of the mirror stage, thereby grounding narcissistic development in a symbolic register that neither Hegel's dialectic nor the Jekels-Bergler introjection/projection model can adequately account for.

     right from his first steps in articulating Identifizierung [identification] — which I will return to later because it cannot be avoided — Freud implied that there is a first possible identification with the father as such, prior to the very first sketching out of the Oedipal situation.

489. #489

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.7

     **Jacques Lacan** > **Contents**

     Theoretical move: This is the table of contents for Lacan's Seminar VIII (Transference), listing chapter headings that signal the seminar's major theoretical concerns: a commentary on Plato's Symposium, the object of desire and castration dialectic, a reading of Claudel's Coûfontaine trilogy, and the relation between Capital I (Ideal) and little a (objet petit a).

     XXIV. Identification via "ein einziger Zug"

490. #490

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.369

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **CAPITAL I A N D LITTLE** *a* > **IDENTIFICATION VIA** *"E IN E IN Z IG E R Z U G* **"**

     Theoretical move: The passage performs two linked theoretical moves: (1) it distinguishes the *einziger Zug* (single trait) as a sign rather than a signifier, using it to differentiate Ego Ideal (symbolic introjection) from Ideal Ego (imaginary projection); and (2) it articulates love as structured by the unconditional dimension of demand, where love is "giving what you don't have," connecting poverty/lack structurally to desire, and wealth/jouissance structurally to the saint's position — thereby positioning the analyst's own ideal against the horizon of sainthood and jouissance.

     Freud paused in his text to tell us expressly that, in the first two fundamental modes of identification, identification always occurs via ein einziger Zug [a single trait, stroke, or characteristic].

491. #491

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.386

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **THE RELATIONSHIP BETW EEN ANXIETY A N D DESIRE** > **"A D R EA M OF A SHADOW IS M A N "**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the subject's exit from narcissistic captivity depends on the structuring function of the signifier in the field of the Other: the distinction between Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal, mapped through the optical schema, shows that it is only by traversing the dream-field of wandering signifiers that the subject can glimpse the "reality of desire" beyond the shadow of narcissistic cathexis.

     I intentionally stress the need to distinguish between two different concrete levels of identification, making an obvious distinction that is phenomenologically within everyone's ken: the ideal ego is not to be confused with the ego-ideal.

492. #492

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.161

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > *ÂGALMA*

     Theoretical move: Lacan defines the psychoanalytic object as *àgalma* — the partial object of desire that is incommensurable with ordinary objects of equivalence — and argues that this object, not identificatory or metaphysical constructs, is the true pivot of love, desire, and analytic practice, requiring a strict topology of subject, little other, and big Other to be properly situated.

     what results is identification with the very person we addressed as the object of our love, with a striking shift from love to identification. This is the third type of identification about which you have to read a bit of Freud

493. #493

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.229

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **D E M A N D A N D DESIRE IN THE ORAL A N D A N A L STAGES** > <span id="page-221-0"></span>**ORAL, ANAL, A N D GENITAL**

     Theoretical move: Lacan articulates the oral, anal, and genital stages through the dialectic of demand and desire, showing how each stage structures the subject's relation to the Other differently, culminating in the genital/castration stage where objet petit a is defined as the Other minus phi (a = A - φ), revealing that the subject can only satisfy the Other's demand by demeaning the Other into an object of desire.

     revealing to us what is always implied in even the most elaborate forms of oral identification.

494. #494

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.391

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **THE RELATIONSHIP BETW EEN ANXIETY A N D DESIRE** > **"A D R EA M OF A SHADOW IS M A N "**

     Theoretical move: Lacan recasts Abraham's concept of "partial love for the object" (Partialliebe) to argue that identification with the ego-ideal operates through isolated signifying traits (einziger Zug), not global introjection, and that narcissistic cathexis of one's own genitals is the structural condition for the exclusion of the object's genitals — establishing the phallus as the pivot that organises the series of partial objects (objet petit a) within the imaginary field structured by the mirror stage and face-to-face erotic posture.

     it is an identification via isolated traits, each of which is unique and has a signifying structure.

495. #495

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.345

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **CAPITAL I A N D LITTLE** *a* > **SLIPPAGE IN THE M EA N IN G OF THE IDEAL**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the analyst's function cannot be theorized neutrally from outside the analytic group, because post-Freudian technique underwent a symptomatic "slippage" in which the ego-ideal (Ich-Ideal) was quietly replaced by the ideal ego (ideales Ich) — a displacement that reflects the analyst's own subjective involvement and traces back to the 1920 turning point, where analytic discourse ceased to recognize itself as a discourse bearing on the discourse of the unconscious.

     It was said very early on that the analyst takes on the role of the analysand's ego-ideal. This is both true and false. It is true in the sense that this sometimes happens.

496. #496

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.385

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **THE RELATIONSHIP BETW EEN ANXIETY A N D DESIRE**

     Theoretical move: This transitional passage announces the next session's theoretical agenda: to clarify the topography of desire by distinguishing the ideal ego from the ego-ideal through the function of the *einziger Zug* (unary trait), thereby articulating the object's role in relation to narcissism.

     the function of the einziger Zug, which fundamentally characterizes the ego-ideal

497. #497

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.154

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > *ÂGALMA*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Greek term *âgalma* — traced through its etymological ambiguities (sparkle, admiration, envy) and its literary uses in Homer and Euripides — to recover the original psychoanalytic discovery of the partial object as the pivotal point of desire, against Ego Psychology's domestication of that discovery into a "totalising" genital-oblative love that falsely resolves the subject/object opposition.

     it doesn't simply mean that you turn him into a copy of yourself or himself, but that you make something else of him, around which something happens

498. #498

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.150

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > *ÂGALMA*

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Alcibiades' speech in Plato's *Symposium* and a verse from Euripides' *Hecuba*, Lacan argues that *âgalma* names the hidden precious object inside the other that captures desire — a specifically psychoanalytic notion whose fetishistic function displaces the dyadic dialectic of beauty with a triadic topology of the subject's relation to the symbolic.

     He who begins to climb toward love proceeds by the path of identification and of production... He finds in beauty his terminus and identifies it with the perfection of the labor of love.

499. #499

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.70

     **Jacques Lacan** > **THE M AINSPRING OF LOVE** > *PAUSANIAS*

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Pausanias's speech in the *Symposium* as a "psychology of the rich" — an ethics of love structured entirely around the valuation, investment, and capitalization of the beloved as a good — and uses this reading to argue that any ethics which reduces love to outward signs of value inevitably produces illusion, thereby distancing Plato himself from Pausanias's position.

     We can, I think, discern the successor of this type of character, as we glimpse him in Plato's dialogue, in another type that I will designate for you rapidly because he's located at the other end of this chain.

500. #500

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.409

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **THE RELATIONSHIP BETW EEN ANXIETY A N D DESIRE** > **M O U R N IN G THE LOSS OF THE ANALYST**

     Theoretical move: The passage advances a structural account of desire's object by showing that the phallus functions as a summit organizing the scale of objects, that the subject of desire is nothing but an apostrophe inscribed in the Other's desire, and that the ego-ideal (as Einziger Zug) is what rivets the subject to the ideal ego — a structure that also explains the distinction between mourning and melancholia as processes of exhausting narcissistic trait-identifications one by one.

     what is true at the collective level is also true at the individual level. The relationship between the subject and outside objects revolves around the function of the ideal.

501. #501

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.354

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **CAPITAL I A N D LITTLE** *a* > **SLIPPAGE IN THE M EA N IN G OF THE IDEAL**

     Theoretical move: The passage distinguishes the ideal ego (imaginary, narcissistic image of self-display) from the ego-ideal (the introjected paternal signifier that organizes narcissistic benefit from a specific point), arguing that the imaginary phallus (lowercase phi) slips between the two terms [S and a] in fantasy, and that the analyst occupies the place of the ego-ideal for the patient — a structural position that must remain morally intact precisely to make the patient's libidinal disorder possible.

     This is what we analysts express by saying that, in such cases, he or she introjects the paternal image... the signifier is the instrument thanks to which these two characters, male and female, can 'extroject' themselves from the objective situation.

502. #502

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.446

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > ⁴⁶⁷ **Editor's Notes**

     Theoretical move: This passage consists entirely of editorial notes for Seminar VIII, including acknowledgements, manuscript preparation credits, and a fragment of reconstructed seminar text. It is non-substantive filler with no original theoretical argument.

     This will lead us to the heart of the function of identification. As we are still concerned with locating the analyst's function

503. #503

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.172

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > *ÂGALMA* > <span id="page-161-0"></span>**BETWEEN SOCRATES A N D ALCIBIADES**

     Theoretical move: Lacan reads Socrates' refusal of Alcibiades through the structure of the metaphor of love: Socrates' 'kénosis' (constitutive emptiness/non-knowledge) prevents the substitution of erastés for erômenos, and his interpretation of Alcibiades' speech reveals that what Alcibiades truly seeks — in Socrates and then in Agathon — is the agalma (partial object), the supreme point at which the subject is abolished in fantasy, which Socrates both knows and is doomed to misrecognize by substituting a lure in its place.

     you will be able to transmit the image of you loving [aimant], qua image of you loving - that is how you will enter into the path of superior identifications traced out by the path of beauty

504. #504

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.146

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **FROM** *E P IS T É M E* **TO** *M Y T H O U S* > <span id="page-136-0"></span>**EXIT FROM THE ULTRA-W ORLD**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that love's discourse is structurally conditioned by a founding "he did not know" (the position of the erastés before the erômenon), and that Alcibiades' entrance into the Symposium introduces the objet petit a (the agalma) as the object of unique covetousness that disrupts the harmonious ascent toward beauty and reveals love's fundamentally non-harmonious, scandalous dimension.

     he goes right to the only person whose identity he is able to discern given his inebriated condition... namely, in the metaxù position, in-between, between Socrates and Agathon

505. #505

     Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.361

     **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **CAPITAL I A N D LITTLE** *a* > **IDENTIFICATION VIA** *"E IN E IN Z IG E R Z U G* **"**

     Theoretical move: Lacan critiques the Jekels-Bergler theory of narcissism and the ego-ideal by showing that their reliance on a "neutral energy" oscillating between Eros and Thanatos, and their attribution of object-creation to the death drive, result from a failure to distinguish the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real registers — a failure that his optical schema (mirror A, real image *i(a)*, and flowers *a*) is designed to correct and generalize.

     it concerns a differentiation that is produced inside a certain topographic field by the specific operation known as identification

506. #506

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.35

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 4*: *Wednesday 6 December 1961* > What then is a signifier?

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the essence of the signifier lies not in qualitative difference but in the unary trait (einziger Zug) — a mark that introduces pure difference into the real. Through examples ranging from Chinese calligraphy to Paleolithic notched bones to the Marquis de Sade's tally marks, Lacan demonstrates that the signifier's function is to connote difference in the pure state, entirely distinct from resemblance or qualitative variation.

     You will say: 'Laplanche is Laplanche and Lacan is Lacan'. But it is precisely there that the whole question lies, since precisely in analysis the question is posed whether Laplanche is not the thought of Lacan and if Lacan is not the being of Laplanche.

507. #507

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.301

     *Seminar 26: Wednesday 27 June 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the analytic object (objet petit a) is specifically the object of castration — distinguished from objects of privation or frustration — and demonstrates this through topological analysis of the cross-cap, showing that the object of desire only rejoins its intimacy by a centrifugal (outside-in) path, structurally irreducible to Aristotelian logic's object of privation.

     the support-formula of the third type of identification which I noted for you a long time ago, since the time of the graph, under the form of $ which you now know how to read as cut of big $ ◊ o

508. #508

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.240

     *Seminar 21*: *Wednesday 23 May 1962* > *Seminar 22*: *Wednesday 30 May 1962*

     Theoretical move: The cut—not the surface—is the generative operation that engenders topological surfaces and, by analogy, the subject: because the signifier is constitutively different from itself, it can only achieve consistency by closing on the real (which alone furnishes identity/sameness), and this closure-through-repetition is structurally identical to the logic of demand, thereby grounding the subject's constitution in the loop of demand around the signifier.

     this something which focusses our experience on the very structure of the subject. I am trying to make you follow more closely this link of the signifier to the subjective structure… in connection with identification

509. #509

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.25

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 3*: *Wednesday 29 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses phonetics (the silent P between implosion and explosion), animal communication, baby-talk, pidgin, and cross-species identification to clear the ground for a theory of the signifier and the function of the One — arguing that what specifies a tongue is not simply speech but a differential structure of presence/absence, and that identification (not pre-logical participation) is the fundamental phenomenon underlying the human subject's relation to language and the Other.

     Identification, namely that which is able very precisely and also as intensely as possible, to imagine there being put under some sort of being of your relationships the substance of another, is something which can be illustrated to infinity

510. #510

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.213

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 19*: *Wednesday 9 May 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that desire is not beyond language but structured through it, and that the subject's constitution as desire requires grasping both the topological dimension of the objet petit a and its role in fantasy—where the Graph of Desire's two-level structure reveals that fantasy anticipates the ideal ego in a temporal logic of the future perfect, pointing toward a 'temporal dynamics' that exceeds mere spatial topology.

     the spatialising topological mapping out of the identificatory function... we will have to come back on it to constitute no longer a kinetics but a temporal dynamics

511. #511

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.290

     *Seminar 24*: *Wednesday 13 June 1962*

     Theoretical move: At the close of Seminar 9, Lacan positions the logic of desire—articulated through the fantasy matheme ($◇a) and the topology of the subject's relation to the object—as the necessary supplement to Lévi-Straussian structuralism, while simultaneously arguing that the three clinical structures (neurosis, perversion, psychosis) are each 'normal' expressions of the three constitutive terms of desire, and that misreading drive as biological agency is the foundational error of ego-psychology/American psychoanalysis.

     the first form, the one which will remain in short at the edge, at the end of our development this year, the one which is put as the first, the most mysterious also... the identification to the father

512. #512

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.19

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the classical philosophical tradition falls into idealism by substituting the ego-ideal for the subject, and proposes instead to ground the subject's unknowing perspective rigorously in the inaugural identification to a single, concrete signifying trait — the unary trait — rather than any Plotinian ideal unity.

     the inaugural identification of the subject to the radical signifier, not at all of the Plotinian one, but of the single trait as such

513. #513

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.91

     *Seminar 9*: *Wednesday 24 January 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Russell's paradox—the set of all sets that do not include themselves—as a structural homology for the analytic subject's self-exclusion, arguing that the letter's signifying function (not logical intuition) is what generates the paradox, and then pivots to show how the metonymical object of desire (objet petit a) undergoes metaphorical substitution for the faded subject in demand, yielding the master signifier of the "good object."

     all the articulated identifications of the subject's demand; his demand is oral, it is the mother's breast which takes them up into its parenthesis

514. #514

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.110

     *Seminar 10*: *Wednesday 21 February 1962* > *Seminar 11*: *Wednesday 28 February 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan pivots from the unary trait's role in constituting the subject to the logic of privation, arguing that the "minus one" (the subject's non-identity with the unary trait) is the structural condition for lack in the Real, and that this founds the connection between the signifier, narcissism of small differences, and the sexual drive's privileged function in subjectivity.

     the subject constituted or not as bearer of this unary trait, is what allows us to take today our first step into what will constitute the object of our next lecture, namely the taking up again of the functions of privation, frustration, castration.

515. #515

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.7

     *Seminar 1: Wednesday 15 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: By interrogating the Cartesian cogito through the logical paradox of the liar ("I am lying"), Lacan argues that "I think" cannot ground "I am" because it confuses the planes of enunciation and statement (énoncé/énonciation), thereby opening the question of the split subject and the impossibility of self-grounding identity in psychoanalysis.

     let us enter into the identity-relationships of the subject, and let us enter into it through the Cartesian formula

516. #516

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.169

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 16*: *Wednesday 4 April 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage advances a structural account of anxiety as the desire of the Other (not a defence against which one defends, but the source of defences), articulates the phallus as the mediating object between demand and desire, and then pivots to a topological grounding of these arguments through the introduction of the torus and a critique of Eulerian circles as an inadequate logical model—establishing topology as the rigorous foundation for Lacanian logical claims about identification and negation.

     thinking stumbles once it is a question, not only of the term identification, but even of the simple practice of identifying anything whatsoever in the field of our experience.

517. #517

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.20

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 3*: *Wednesday 29 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the single trait (*einziger Zug*) is the minimal signifying mark through which the subject's identification is suspended, and uses the contrast between animal speech (access only to the little other) and human speech (access to the big Other) to demonstrate that the constitutive feature of human language is not mere phonatory emission but the structural locus of the Other as the place of the signifying chain.

     this function of the single trait, this function of the one... it can only be - you see already the path that I am leading you along - at a pinch the instrument of this identification

518. #518

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.39

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 December 1961*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses Euclid's definition of the monad to ground the concept of the "unary trait" (einziger Zug) as the minimal support of difference and identification, arguing that the second type of Freudian identification (partial, regressive) is the privileged entry-point into the problem of identification precisely because structure—located in the Symbolic—always emerges at the level of the particular, and that the Symbolic/Imaginary/Real triad is not an ontological division but a methodological one born of the Freudian field of experience.

     it is a question here of the second kind of identification, p.117, volume 13 of the Gesammelte Werke of Freud... only a single trait of the objectified person

519. #519

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.94

     *Seminar 10*: *Wednesday 21 February 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the privileged function of the phallus in identification is grounded in the signifier's logic of non-identity (Russell's paradox), and proposes a decisive reversal: in place of Kantian Einheit (synthetic unity as norm), psychoanalytic logic requires Einzigkeit (unary trait as exception/singularity), thereby replacing transcendental logic with a logic of the signifier.

     the privileged function of the phallus in the identification of the subject... from a certain moment of the Freudian work, the question of identification comes into the foreground, comes to dominate, comes to remodel the whole Freudian theory

520. #520

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.98

     *Seminar 10*: *Wednesday 21 February 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage pivots on the structural distinction between love and desire: love is a natural, hydraulic force grounded in narcissistic libido, whereas desire is constituted by lack—specifically the lack of the phallus in the other—and can never coincide with love without collapsing into narcissism. This distinction grounds the clinic of hysteria and obsession and is anchored retrospectively in Plato's Symposium as the founding articulation of the subject of desire.

     it was properly speaking, when I tackled what ought to be constituted for us about the narcissistic relationship as a consequence of the equivalence put forward by Freud between narcissistic libido and object libido

521. #521

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.120

     *Seminar 12*: *Wednesday 7 March 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the torus as the privileged topological surface for modelling the subject, arguing that the subject's structure is founded not on inclusion but on exclusion via the unary trait, such that class formation (and the universal/particular dialectic) originates in a "minus one" — the subject as constitutively lacking — which generates the logic of castration, foreclosure, and ultimately the loop-topology of the torus rather than the closed interiority of the sphere.

     this infinitely flat being... it is here that we are going to advance into this infinitely flat subject in the way that we conceive of it, if we wish to give its true value to the fact of identification as Freud promotes it for us.

522. #522

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.28

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 3*: *Wednesday 29 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that identification must be grounded not in folklore or empirical phenomena but in the logic of the signifier, where the unit constitutes itself as pure difference ('the one as such is the Other'), so that identification is structurally distinct from unification and can only be understood through the differential structure of language as analysed via Saussure and elaborated in terms of the big Other.

     Identification has nothing to do with unification. It is only by distinguishing it from it that one can give it, not only its essential accent, but its functions and its varieties.

523. #523

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.193

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 18*: *Wednesday 2 May 1962*

     Theoretical move: Piera Aulagnier, invited by Lacan, argues that anxiety is not typed by content (oral, castration, death) but is structurally defined as the collapse of all identificatory reference points—the ego's dissolution before the un-symbolisable—and that its resolution or temporary suspension is bound to the coincidence of demand and desire in jouissance, with castration functioning as the transitional passage that converts the penis into the phallic signifier.

     there is nothing surprising in the statement that anxiety is very closely related to identification. If identification always involves something at the level of desire, - the desire of the subject as it relates to the desire of the Other

524. #524

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.68

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 7*: *Wednesday 10 January 1962* > I am - I think.

     Theoretical move: Lacan introduces imaginary numbers (√-1) as a formal analogy for the subject "before any nomination," arguing that replacing the unary trait (1) with the imaginary unit (i) in a continued-fraction series produces a periodic rather than convergent function — thereby modeling the subject's irreducible instability and its structural relation to the ego-ideal and the imaginary phallus, while connecting this back to the logical scansion of the three-hesitation structure of Logical Time.

     in the identification which is the one which is made to the unary trait, is there not enough to support this unthinkable and impossible point of the 'I think'

525. #525

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.151

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 15*: *Wednesday 28 March 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of the torus (and introduces the cross-cap) to formalise the dialectical relationship between Demand and desire in the subject, showing how the torus's privileged circle—encompassing both the generating circle (Demand) and the inner circle (metonymical desire)—allows him to locate objet petit a and the phallus as structural measures of the subject's relation to desire, while insisting that identification is strictly a dimension of the subject and not of drive or image.

     Nothing can correctly be said to identify itself, the term identification is only introduced into Freud's thinking from the moment that one can to some degree, even if this is not articulated in Freud, consider this identification as the dimension of the subject

526. #526

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.307

     *Seminar 26: Wednesday 27 June 1962*

     Theoretical move: At the close of Seminar 9, Lacan articulates the objet petit a as a topological-ontological operator: it is the object of castration that, by its enucleation from the cross-cap, transforms the imaginary sphere into a Möbius surface, thereby constituting the subject's world while marking the irreducible hole at the centre of desire and the Other's desire—a 'acosmic point' that underlies every metaphor, every symptom, and the anxiety of confronting what the Other desires of the subject.

     the identification of the object of desire to what must be renounced in order that the world as world should be delivered to us

527. #527

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.3

     *Seminar 1: Wednesday 15 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar IX by arguing that identification must be approached not through the imaginary relation to the other but through the logical problem of identity (A = A), and that the subject is constituted not by any self-present cogito but solely through the existence of the signifier and its effects — a thesis which frames the entire year's inquiry.

     Identification - this is my title and my subject for this year... the relationship of the subject to the signifier.

528. #528

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.129

     *Seminar 13*: *Wednesday 14 March 1962*

     Theoretical move: The neurotic's defining feature is the desire to know — specifically to reverse the effacing of the thing by the signifier and recover the real that preceded signification — and this structure, rather than social maladjustment, gives neurosis its theoretical authority; meanwhile, sublimation is reframed as a paradoxical detour through signification by which jouissance is obtained without repression.

     This detour therefore is well designed to situate, and at the same time to justify, the double aims of our research, in so far as it is what we are pursuing this year on the terrain of identification.

529. #529

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.67

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 7*: *Wednesday 10 January 1962* > What is the proper name?

     Theoretical move: Lacan rewrites the Cartesian cogito as a structural problem of the subject's relation to the Other and to signification: the "I think" is not a logical consequence but a preconscious signified that points to an ontological x—the subject—while the infinite regress of "I think that I think" is short-circuited by the mirror-like reduplication of cogito and sum, anticipating the split between the subject of the statement and the subject of the enunciation.

     what there is at the beginning in order that there should be produced the identification of this 'I think'

530. #530

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.52

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 6*: *Wednesday 20 December 1961* > Where is the subject in all of that?

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that the proper name cannot be adequately defined by Russell's nominalist reduction to "word for particular" nor by Gardiner's psychological accent on sonant material, and that a rigorous definition requires grounding the proper name in the subject's relationship to the letter — thereby linking proper-name function to the unary trait and the unconscious structured by the letter.

     if Mill had had a more complete notion of what was involved in the incidence of the proper name, he should not only have taken into account the identificatory character of the mark when it was being forged, but also its distinctive character

531. #531

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.289

     *Seminar 24*: *Wednesday 13 June 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Symposium's agalma — what Alcibiades seeks at the heart of Socrates — to argue that the object of desire is ultimately the Other's desire itself (the pure eron), and that the phallus functions as the punctual, organising point that connects the barred subject ($) to the object (o) in the fundamental fantasy, while also introducing the third Freudian mode of identification as constituted through desire at the locus of the big Other.

     the third mode of identification, this identification where the subject is constituted as desire and in which all our previous discourse prevented us from overlooking that the field of desire is only conceivable for man starting from the function of the big Other

532. #532

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.200

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 18*: *Wednesday 2 May 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that anxiety arises at the precise moment when the desire of the Other becomes unnameable, dissolving both ego and Other as supports of identification; this structural logic is then differentiated across neurosis, perversion, and psychosis, where for the psychotic the foreclosure of symbolisation means that the emergence of desire itself—rather than its loss—is the privileged source of anxiety, since it forces a confrontation with the constitutive lack (castration) that was never symbolised.

     identification can only happen in relation to what the subject imagines rightly or wrongly to be the desire of the Other.

533. #533

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.43

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 5: Wednesday 13 December 1961*

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes between a productive 'crystallographic Gestalt' (structurally homologous to the signifying combinatory) and a confusing 'anthropomorphic Gestalt' (the macrocosm/microcosm analogy), then pivots to argue that the automatism of repetition is not a natural cycle of need-satisfaction but the compulsive re-emergence of a unique signifier — a letter — that a repressed cycle has become, thereby grounding repetition in the agency of the signifier rather than in biological or imaginary schemas.

     the unary trait, in this function of the stroke as figure of the one in so far as it is only the distinctive trait, the trait precisely all the more distinctive in so far as there is effaced from it almost everything which distinguishes it

534. #534

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.214

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 19*: *Wednesday 9 May 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the phallus functions as the pivot of desire's constitution by operating as a signifier that cannot signify itself — the transmutation from need to desire passes through the phallic function — and that this structure can only be adequately rendered through topology (torus, cross-cap), which provides the 'transcendental aesthetic model' for the subject's exclusion from the signifying field and the analyst's place as incarnated desire.

     identification to the unary trait, identification is only introduced, only operates purely and simply in this product of -o by the small o

535. #535

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.12

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961*

     Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that analytic identification is fundamentally signifier-identification (as opposed to imaginary identification), and grounds this in a critique of the Saussurean signifier, information theory, and the Subject Supposed to Know—arguing that the Cartesian cogito reaches an impasse precisely because the subject of enunciation cannot be grounded in any absolute knowledge.

     what we understand by identification - because this is what we encounter in identification, in what is concrete in our experience concerning identification - is a signifier-identification (une identification de signifiant).

536. #536

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.196

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 18*: *Wednesday 2 May 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage advances a structural typology of clinical positions (normality, neurosis, perversion, psychosis) organized around the axis of identificatory conflict with the partial object, castration, and the differential articulation of demand, desire, and jouissance — arguing that what distinguishes each structure is not the content of the drive but the subject's identificatory relation to the phallic object and the Other's desire.

     the first moment of this key mechanism of the oral relation which is projective identification has its origin in the mother. There is a first projection on the plane of desire which comes from her. The child will have to identify with this or to fight it.

537. #537

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 7*: *Wednesday 10 January 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage repositions the proper name as a pivot in the theory of identification, specifically linking it to the second (regressive) type of identification — identification with the unary trait of the Other — and situates this within an interdisciplinary horizon (linguistics and mathematics).

     the identification of the subject, the second, regressive, type of identification to the unary trait of the Other

538. #538

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.92

     *Seminar 9*: *Wednesday 24 January 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan demonstrates that the breast as signifier is not a mammary object but a stand-in for the phallus, and uses the Fort-Da alternation (o / -o) to show that subjectivity and identification are constituted not by presence or absence alone but by their conjunction—the cut—which requires the imaginary unit √-1 as the formal root of desire's structure.

     we see in the identification relationship, because we know that in what the subject assimilates it is him in his frustration… the relationship… has the closest relationship to the realisation of alternation.

539. #539

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.103

     *Seminar 10*: *Wednesday 21 February 1962* > *Seminar 11*: *Wednesday 28 February 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan positions desire as an unsurpassable "truth function" at the heart of analytic practice, articulates the Death Drive and Life Drive (Eros/libido) as structured around the signifier and the phallus, and uses the Kantian critique of pure reason—especially its categories, pure intuition, and the synthetic function—as an analogy to illuminate the relationship between subjectivity, the body, and desire, while invoking the Kant/Sade parallel to show that desire exceeds all pathological (comfort/need) determinations.

     This is the meaning of identification in so far as it is defined as such by Freud

540. #540

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.48

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 6*: *Wednesday 20 December 1961* > Where is the subject in all of that?

     Theoretical move: Lacan locates the subject neither in vital immanence nor in the pure signifying operation, but in the articulation *between* these two poles — and uses the case of Little Hans (the crumpled giraffe dream) as an exemplary figure of this in-between status, before pivoting to the proper name as the paradigmatic signifier through which a subject constitutes his minimal anchoring of being.

     Here already we see exemplified this function of signifier... Here is something which is going to make me dwell for a moment today on something... I mean the function of the name

541. #541

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.152

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 15*: *Wednesday 28 March 1962*

     Theoretical move: The passage traces how the subject constitutes itself through the unary trait and the non-response of the Other, rewriting Freud's "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" as a formula of the One's advent, and then uses Sade to demonstrate that the object of desire is structurally dependent on the Other's silence—culminating in the Sadian drive toward annihilating signifying power as the logical extreme of this dialectic.

     we can grasp in a clear and rational fashion an angle from which to enter into what is meant by the identification of the subject in so far as the subject brings to birth the unary trait

542. #542

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.29

     *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 4*: *Wednesday 6 December 1961*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the formula "A is A" is not a logical truth but a historically contingent belief whose apparent self-evidence conceals the real condition of subject-formation: the subject emerges only from the non-self-identity of the signifier, demonstrated through the Fort-Da game and the distinction between sign and signifier, between indexical and nominal uses of language.

     what I announced to you the last time that I intended to make pivot around the notion of the 1 our problem, that of identification, it being already announced that identification is not just simply to make 1

543. #543

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.113

     *Seminar 12*: *Wednesday 7 March 1962*

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that error is constitutively tied to the subject's function of counting, and that this "error in the count" precedes any explicit numerical knowledge — grounding the subject's structure in the unary trait and repetition rather than in empirical acquisition, thereby positioning error not as accident but as constitutive of subjectivity itself.

     in beginning to tackle by way of privation what concerns the most central point of the structure of the identification of the subject

544. #544

     The Triumph of Religion · Jacques Lacan · p.31

     I. Regarding Ethics, Freud Has What it Takes

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Freud's ethics cannot be reduced to utilitarianism or humanism because its core is the structuring function of the Name-of-the-Father as prohibition of jouissance, a mechanism legible in St. Paul's account of the law and sin, and whose truth Freud traces through the Oedipus complex, Totem and Taboo, and Moses and Monotheism to a Judeo-Christian ontological tradition that grounds the subject in discourse rather than in biology.

     The unloved father becomes the identification upon which one heaps reproaches in oneself.

545. #545

     The Triumph of Religion · Jacques Lacan · p.41

     II. Can Psychoanalysis Constitute the Kind of Ethics Necessitated by our Times?

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Freud's investigation of narcissism and the mirror stage reveals that self-love is always love of an imaginary other, and that the unconscious—structured like language—marks the place where the subject is split from the Thing (Das Ding), making any ethics grounded in ego-psychology or object relations insufficient for the demands of scientific modernity.

     Owing to identifications with his imaginary forms, man believes he recognizes the core of his unity in the guise of self-mastery by which he is necessarily duped.

546. #546

     Critique of Pure Reason · Immanuel Kant

     THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON > CHAPTER III. The Ideal of Pure Reason. > SECTION III. Of Opinion, Knowledge, and Belief.

     Theoretical move: Kant distinguishes conviction (objectively valid, communicable) from persuasion (merely subjective, incommunicable), then grades subjective validity into opinion, belief, and knowledge, and argues that within the limits of pure speculative reason neither opinion nor knowledge is possible regarding God and the future life, but a practical/doctrinal/moral belief is both possible and necessary—making moral certainty the highest epistemic achievement available to reason beyond experience.

     I am irresistibly constrained to believe in the existence of God and in a future life; and I am sure that nothing can make me waver in this belief, since I should thereby overthrow my moral maxims, the renunciation of which would render me hateful in my own eyes.

547. #547

     Critique of Pure Reason · Immanuel Kant

     THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON > BOOK I. > CHAPTER I. Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason.

     Theoretical move: Kant demonstrates that rational psychology's four paralogisms arise because the "I think" of transcendental apperception—a mere logical form, not an object of intuition—is illegitimately converted into metaphysical determinations of a substantive, simple, identical, and embodied soul; the logical exposition of thought is thus mistaken for a metaphysical determination of the object.

     The proposition of the identity of my Self amidst all the manifold representations of which I am conscious, is likewise a proposition lying in the conceptions themselves, and is consequently analytical.

548. #548

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.33

     2 The Orthopsychic Subj ect: Film Theory and the Reception o£Lacan > The Screen as Miror

     Theoretical move: Copjec argues that film theory effected a "Foucauldization" of Lacanian theory by collapsing the Lacanian gaze into a panoptic structure of total visibility, thereby reducing the subject to a fully determined, knowable position and eliminating the radical Lacanian insight that signifying systems never produce determinate identity—a move that makes resistance theoretically impossible.

     The subject first recognizes itself by identifying with the gaze and then recognizes the images on the screen.

549. #549

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.40

     Orthopsycbism

     Theoretical move: By reading Bachelard's "orthopsychism" against the panoptic model, Copjec shows that objective self-surveillance necessarily produces a split (rather than transparent) subject haunted by deception—and uses this to pivot to Lacan's gaze as a marker of the subject's culpability and splitting, rather than mere visibility.

     The Bachelardian subject may not locate in its image a full and upright being that it jubilantly (but wrongly) takes itself to be, but this subject does locate in the process of scrutinizing this image the joyous prospect of righting itself.

550. #550

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.183

     The Unvennogender Other: Hysteria and DeDlocracy in ADlerica > The Locked-Room Paradox and the Group

     Theoretical move: The locked-room paradox of detective fiction is the literary figure for the logical operation of suture: a non-empirical surplus element (Objet petit a) must be added to any differential series of signifiers to mark the impossibility of its closure, and this interior limit is what makes counting—and hence the modern statistical-political formation of groups—possible at all.

     members of a modern nation do not fall under the concept 'citizens of X' but under the concept 'identical to the concept citizens of X.'

551. #551

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.253

     LetbalJouissance and the FemlDe Fatale > Sexual Diference and the Superego

     Theoretical move: This footnote-dense passage develops a critique of film theory's assumptions about the gaze, arguing that aggressivity is not grounded in the reversibility of the imaginary look but in the unreturned, unsymbolizable gaze that resists making the subject fully visible — a specifically Lacanian (not imaginary-identificatory) account of the gaze and aggressivity.

     The phenomenon of aggressivity isn't to be explained simply on the level of imaginary identification.

552. #552

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.191

     Detour through the Drive

     Theoretical move: The shift from classical detective fiction to film noir is reinterpreted not as a narrative identification of hero with criminal but as a topological transition between two orders—desire (sense, the signifier, the fort/da game as lack) and drive (being, jouissance, repetition-as-satisfaction)—which Copjec maps onto a broader historical transition from an Oedipal order of desire to a contemporary order of drive in which jouissance is socially commanded rather than privately protected.

     One of the most common descriptions of the historical shift between these two worlds makes identification the pivotal term...the detective comes to identify more and more closely with his criminal adversary until...he has become the criminal himself.

553. #553

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.245

     LetbalJouissance and the FemlDe Fatale > The Female Side: Mathematical Failure > The Male Side: Dynamical Failure

     Theoretical move: Copjec argues that Lacan's formulas of sexuation desubstantialize sex entirely: masculinity is an imposture and femininity a masquerade, because being escapes the symbolic for men just as universality is impossible for women—the sexual relation fails doubly (prohibition for men, impossibility for women), meaning no complementary universe of the sexes can be constructed.

     If the differences among men may be disregarded, and one man can be substituted for another because they are manifestations of the same thing, what this thing is is still unknown

554. #554

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.52

     Orthopsycbism > The Mirror as Screen

     Theoretical move: Copjec argues that Lacanian narcissism, far from anchoring the subject in pleasurable self-recognition, is structured by a constitutive fault or lack in representation that grounds the subject in desire and the death drive—directly opposing the film-theoretical account of the gaze and constructivist accounts of ideology, which mistakenly posit a smooth 'narcissistic pleasure' as the cement between psychical and social reality.

     This is the understanding by which the subject is thought to recognize itself in representations—that I intend to counter.

555. #555

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     III

     Theoretical move: Freud theorizes the Ego Ideal as the structural heir to primary narcissism, distinguishing it sharply from sublimation, and identifies conscience as the psychic agency that measures the actual ego against the ideal—an agency whose regressive form reappears in paranoid self-scrutiny delusions and whose normal operation underlies dream censorship.

     Conscience is instituted basically as an embodiment first of parental criticism, and subsequently of criticism by society at large, a process that more or less repeats itself in the emergence of repressive tendencies

556. #556

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     III

     Theoretical move: Freud elaborates narcissism as the economic ground of self-feeling, arguing that the ego's libidinal economy—structured by the tension between primary narcissism, ego-ideal, and object-cathexes—determines both psychic health and the dynamics of love, repression, and social feeling (guilty conscience as displaced homosexual libido).

     Given that in the case of the 'object' or 'imitative' type it has its basis in the fulfilment of infantile conditions of love, we may venture the dictum: 'Whatever fulfils this condition of love is consequently idealized.'

557. #557

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and its Forms of Dependence

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the super-ego's peculiar severity derives from its dual origin—as the earliest identification (heir to the Oedipus complex) and as a reincarnation of archaic id-formations—and uses this structural account to explain clinical phenomena including negative therapeutic reaction, unconscious guilt, and the differential manifestation of guilt in obsessional neurosis, melancholia, and hysteria, ultimately linking the super-ego's cruelty to the death drive turned inward.

     the ego very largely develops out of identifications which take the place of cathexes generated by the id and then abandoned, and that the first such identifications routinely assume the role of a special judgemental entity within the ego

558. #558

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: The passage uses the Falstaff-Hal and Rosalind-Orlando dynamics in Shakespeare as allegorical demonstrations of how imaginative play can disrupt the repetition compulsion of paternal authority (superego) and the regressive pull of maternal wish-fulfilment (id), positioning Shakespeare's therapeutic imagination as an alternative to Freud's resigned acceptance of fate's harsh reductions.

     he usurps Falstaff's position and takes the role of his own father. All of a sudden, the space of extemporization… where identities are in flux, closes down.

559. #559

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     IV

     Theoretical move: Through a detailed clinical analysis of Little Hans's horse phobia and the Wolf-man's wolf phobia, Freud argues that symptom-formation in neurosis is constituted not merely by repression of a single drive-impulse but by the simultaneous repression of two opposed impulses (hostile aggression and passive affection toward the father), with displacement onto an animal surrogate as the structural mechanism that transforms a comprehensible emotional reaction into a true neurosis, and with regression serving as an alternative or supplementary defense to repression proper.

     He identified himself with this edible manikin, the chieftain was easily recognizable as a father-surrogate, and this fantasy became the initial basis for his autoerotic activities.

560. #560

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     II

     Theoretical move: Freud develops the theory of narcissism by tracing libido distribution across organic illness, hypochondria, sleep, and love-object choice, arguing that ego-libido and object-libido are structurally parallel and that primary narcissism is universal, grounding the compulsion to love others in the pathogenic effects of excessive libidinal build-up in the ego.

     we may also feel more inclined to embrace the idea of a heavy build-up of ego-libido, and relate it to the phenomena of hypochondria and paraphrenia.

561. #561

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Freud's theory of the unconscious reveals an irreducible cycle of repetition, submission, and authority-seeking that underlies all politics, love, and therapy, and that the analyst — like Shakespeare's Falstaff — must strategically occupy the position of the primal father/authority in order to work through, rather than merely repeat, these foundational fantasies.

     the only way that a people can develop, or even maintain stability, is by accepting individuals of the leader type who tap into the old Oedipal fantasies

562. #562

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and the Super-Ego (the Ego-Ideal)

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the super-ego/ego-ideal is the structural heir to the Oedipus complex, formed through identification with the repressed paternal obstacle, and constitutes the psychical site of conscience, morality, and religion—thereby answering the charge that psychoanalysis neglects man's 'higher' nature by locating that higher presence in the ego-ideal's phylogenetically inherited structure.

     his infantile ego gained the strength to accomplish the repression by erecting that same obstacle within itself. It borrowed the requisite strength from the father, so to speak

563. #563

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     VII

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that anxiety in phobias and obsessional neurosis is fundamentally a signal-affect generated by the ego in response to a danger situation ultimately reducible to castration, and that symptoms are produced not to avoid anxiety per se but to avoid the underlying danger situation that anxiety signals; this requires reconciling the dual-drive theory with the libido-organization stages by treating drives as always mixed rather than pure.

     Just as the super-ego is the father in depersonalized form

564. #564

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     VI

     Theoretical move: Freud consolidates his dualistic drive theory by aligning life/death drives with biological anabolism/catabolism, traces the evolution of libido theory from ego/sexual drive opposition through narcissism to the identification of Eros as the universal binding force, and accounts for sadism as a death drive expelled from the ego that becomes an auxiliary of the sexual function — all while insisting that this dualism cannot be collapsed into Jung's monism.

     the ego is the true and original reservoir of the libido, and that it is from there that the libido is first extended to objects. The ego thus took its place amongst the sexual objects, and was immediately recognized as the most sophisticated of them all.

565. #565

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     Notes

     Theoretical move: This passage consists of translator/editor footnotes to Freud's "The Ego and the Id," clarifying terminological and conceptual issues around das Ich/das Es, the bodily ego, the id as libidinal reservoir, the Oedipus complex, and related matters — it is primarily philological and exegetical rather than advancing an independent theoretical argument.

     The substitution of identification for object-choice has an interesting parallel in the belief of primitive peoples… that when an animal is eaten, its qualities accrue to the eater and become part of his own character.

566. #566

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and its Forms of Dependence

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the ego's structural dependence on the superego reveals how sublimation and identification produce a de-mergence of drives, unleashing the death drive within the superego and making morality itself a lethal product of psychic catabolism; fear of death and consciential fear are thus retraced to castration fear as their core.

     the super-ego resulted from an identification with the father qua paradigm. Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even a sublimation.

567. #567

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     II

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that narcissism and object-love constitute two fundamentally different libidinal economies whose interaction explains the gendered asymmetry of erotic fascination, the structure of parental love, and the various paths to object-choice — showing narcissism to be not merely a developmental phase but a persistent force that shapes object-relations throughout life.

     Full object-love as per the imitative type really does seem to be characteristic of males. It displays conspicuous sexual over-valuation, which probably derives from the original narcissism present in childhood, and accordingly represents its transference onto the sexual object.

568. #568

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     Notes

     Theoretical move: This passage is a notes/apparatus section of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Freud's writings, providing editorial clarifications, translation corrections, and cross-references. The one substantive theoretical note (note 83) articulates Freud's position on unconscious guilt, its analytic treatment, and the limits of the analyst's therapeutic role.

     A guilt-feeling that has been adopted in this way is often the sole remaining vestige of the abandoned love-relationship

569. #569

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and the Super-Ego (the Ego-Ideal)

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the ego's encounter with lost objects produces identification as a structural residue, and that the dissolution of the Oedipus complex specifically generates the super-ego/ego-ideal as a precipitate of those identifications — establishing the super-ego as an internal agency that actively opposes the rest of the ego and is constitutively linked to sublimation, narcissism, and bisexuality.

     the character of the ego is a residual imprint of the object-cathexes that have been given up, and contains the entire history of those object-choices.

570. #570

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: This introductory essay argues that Freud's central theoretical contribution is the concept of erotic and political repetition compulsion — the psyche's conservative drive to re-enact infantile fantasies of perfect love and authority — and that love's pathological character is structurally continuous with transference-love, with the superego's temporary usurpation by the beloved marking the mechanism of falling in love.

     the lover puts the beloved in the place of the Over-I... being in love lets us displace our own internal monarch and put a lord of temporary, blissful misrule on the throne

571. #571

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     I

     Theoretical move: Freud constructs the concept of primary narcissism by tracing it through three convergent sources—clinical perversion, schizophrenic withdrawal, and child/primitive omnipotence of thought—and uses it to justify the theoretical separation of ego-libido from object-libido and sexual drives from ego drives, while defending psychoanalysis as an empirical rather than speculative science.

     the form of narcissism that arises as a result of the incorporation of object-cathexes is a secondary one that develops on top of a primary one rendered obscure by a variety of different influences

572. #572

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     The Two Types of Drives

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that sublimation operates through the ego's desexualization of id-libido, which paradoxically places the ego in the service of the death drive against Eros; and that secondary narcissism is constituted by this withdrawal and internalization of object-libido, while the death drive's silence amidst life's clamour is only held in check by Eros's disruptive demands.

     this same ego deals with the initial object-cathexes of the id – and no doubt later ones as well – by taking their libido into itself and annexing it to the ego-alteration brought about by identification.

573. #573

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: The introduction argues that Freud's theory of Eros is fundamentally a theory of repetition compulsion rooted in the lost maternal object, narcissism, and submission to authority—such that erotic life, political life, and the compulsion to repeat are all expressions of the same libidinal economy governed by the super-ego and the drive to restore an originary, impossible object.

     we believe that by gaining the narcissist's love or at least his recognition, we might share in his numinous life.

574. #574

     How (Not) to Speak of God · Peter Rollins

     HOW (NOT) TO SPEAK OF GOD > TOWARDS ORTHOPRAXIS: BRINGING THEORY TO CHURCH > *Corpus Christi*

     Theoretical move: The passage performs a theological move that displaces propositional truth (orthodoxy) in favour of transformative, relational truth (orthopraxis), arguing that the encounter with God occurs in and through the body of the neighbour—a claim enacted liturgically through parable, Sufi poetry, and Holocaust testimony, all of which converge on the Lacanian-resonant dissolution of a self-enclosed 'I' as the condition of genuine encounter.

     'I am your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I have come down from the cross to visit you. Look at my blood, my suffering, my innocence.'

575. #575

     How (Not) to Speak of God · Peter Rollins

     HOW (NOT) TO SPEAK OF GOD > Part 1 > *Inhabiting the God-shaped hole* > *Being evangelized*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that genuine theological dialogue requires a posture of receptive powerlessness rather than monological self-assertion, reframing Christian mission as a mutual transformation in which the missionary is evangelized by the Other rather than simply transmitting God to the unreached.

     attempting to clone that which they simultaneously exclude as evil

576. #576

     How (Not) to Speak of God · Peter Rollins

     HOW (NOT) TO SPEAK OF GOD > TOWARDS ORTHOPRAXIS: BRINGING THEORY TO CHURCH > *Judas*

     Theoretical move: The passage deploys a liturgical/performative critique of self-legitimating religion, arguing that genuine faith requires radical self-critique — a "self-lacerating" identification with the betrayer (Judas) rather than the righteous — and that this prophetic, self-subverting structure is internal to authentic Christian discourse itself.

     we attempt the difficult task of placing ourselves in the position of the one who betrayed Jesus with a kiss

577. #577

     How (Not) to Speak of God · Peter Rollins

     HOW (NOT) TO SPEAK OF GOD > TOWARDS ORTHOPRAXIS: BRINGING THEORY TO CHURCH > *Heresy*

     Theoretical move: The passage advances a practical-theological argument that epistemic humility before God ("we are all heretics") is not a failure but a liberating recognition, staging this through liturgical performance that embodies the claim that authentic Christian subjectivity is constituted by acknowledged limitation rather than doctrinal mastery.

     everyone is encouraged to come up and kneel before or embrace this upside down cross… Each person takes and keeps a cross.

578. #578

     Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism · Frank Ruda

     Abolishing (Aristotelian) Freedom > Becoming a Movement

     Theoretical move: The passage traces Descartes's move from externally-caused passion to internally-generated emotion as a transition from natural causality to the causality of freedom, wherein subject and object of movement become indistinguishable and the will constitutes a 'practice of truth' — a firm, non-revisable mode of action grounded in the soul's self-relation, setting up the question of how this practice reconciles with fatalism.

     becoming indistinguishable between the thing and its representation, between presentation and representation—'an indistinguishable mixture of idea and thing.'

579. #579

     Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism · Frank Ruda

     Predestination as Emancipation > <span id="unp-ruda-0013.xhtml_p27" class="page"></span>Exaggerating Exaggeration, or Letting (God) Be . . . (God)

     Theoretical move: By reading Luther's radical defense of predestination and absolute necessity through an Adornian/Hegelian lens, the passage argues that genuine freedom is not a human capacity but an impossible event of grace that can only be received through total despair and passive surrender—a structure isomorphic to the Lacanian subject's relationship to the Real and to anxiety as the condition of truth.

     his radical disidentification of freedom and capacity

580. #580

     Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism · Frank Ruda

     Freud against the Illusion of Psychical Freedom > Anatomy Is Destiny II: Male Illusions and Female Choices

     Theoretical move: By reconstructing Freud's "Anatomy is destiny" through the asymmetry between male and female developmental logics, Ruda argues that the female logic—as a forced choice of one's own unconscious that precedes and exceeds the Oedipus complex—reveals a non-arbitrary, non-conscious freedom irreducible to the male totalizing illusion, making "woman" the name for an emancipatory act rather than a fixed entity.

     The female child believes that she is a kind of crippled man that may be able to become a real man (someday). This is clearly also an illusion that actually mirrors, quite literally, the male development and shares the male gaze on femininity.

581. #581

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.74

     3. *The Ethics of the Act* > *The Sinthome as a Site of Singularity*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's late shift from symptom to sinthome marks a theoretical transition from the subject of lack (structured by desire and the symbolic order) to a subject of singularity grounded in jouissance—where identification with the sinthome, as an irreducible kernel of real that resists symbolization, becomes the terminal aim of analysis.

     Lacan, in the final phase of his thinking, came to believe that analysis achieves its end only when the subject comes to identify with its sinthome, recognizing in it the 'real' of its identity.

582. #582

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.92

     3. *The Ethics of the Act* > *The Fraying of Social Ideals*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that social trauma and oppression fray the symbolic anchoring points (points de capiton) that suture the subject to collective ideals, and that the Lacanian act—by temporarily demolishing these quilting points—can break the repetition compulsion imposed by oppressive signifiers, opening a space for singular desire and counterhegem­onic possibility beyond the normative symbolic order.

     the less the subject is able to counter them by signifiers of its own, the more devastatingly they operate

583. #583

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.190

     8. *The Sublimity of Love* > *Narcissism as an Ethical Failure*

     Theoretical move: Narcissistic desire constitutes an ethical failure precisely because it forecloses the unknowability of the other, which Lacanian ethics requires one to confront as the Real dimension of the other — including its traumatic jouissance — rather than reducing the other to a reassuring imaginary or symbolic likeness.

     This is how we become incapable of discovering in the other anything besides our own image.

584. #584

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.252

     8. *The Sublimity of Love* > *Notes* > *8. The Sublimity of Love*

     Theoretical move: This notes section develops a series of theoretical positions linking Das Ding, lost object, courtly love, and the enigma of the Other's desire to show how love operates as a vehicle for the subject's approach to the Thing—always fleetingly—and how love's interpellation can momentarily suspend ordinary socio-symbolic identification.

     this complex accommodation to the matrix of socio-symbolic relations and identifications in and through which we otherwise find our place in the world, is, for the eternity of a moment, suspended

585. #585

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.212

     8. *The Sublimity of Love* > *Making the Sublime "Appear"* > *The Third of Justice*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that post-Lacanian ethics (via Žižek) corrects the Levinasian privileging of the face-to-face encounter by resurrecting the impersonal "Third" as the proper seat of justice, establishing a structural incompatibility between love (which singularizes a privileged One) and justice (which must remain blind to the particular face), grounding ethics in universality rather than in the affective pull of the other's face.

     singularizes her to such an extent as to make any easy identification impossible

586. #586

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.155

     6. *The Dignity of the Thing* > *Repetition as Creativity* > *Symbolic Ideals and Values*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that symbolic quilting points, when chosen critically, serve a constructive function by anchoring desire in collective meaning without arresting its movement—thus enabling sublimation rather than narcissistic closure—and that the ego ideal (symbolic) is theoretically superior to the ideal ego (imaginary) precisely because it opens onto collective structures rather than foreclosing personal limitation.

     the kinds of mirroring identifications that collapse the space between self and other, making it difficult for us to admit that external objects possess an integrity of their own.

587. #587

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.128

     5. *The Jouissance of the Signifi er* > *Lacan's Reading of Joyce*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the sinthome is not a site of pure destruction but of creative renewal: by identifying with his sinthome, Joyce links the symbolic and the real so as to generate innovative signification, making artistic creativity—rather than subjective destitution—a viable response to the death drive's impossibility.

     Lacan came to think that the aim of analysis was to allow the subject to identify with its sinthome, for doing so made it possible for it to disconnect itself from the desire of the Other.

588. #588

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.202

     8. *The Sublimity of Love* > *Making the Sublime "Appear"* > *Love's Innovative Energy*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that love's "innovative energy" derives from its structural orientation toward the Thing—the sublime kernel that desire perpetually circles without attaining—and pivots to a concluding framing of Lacanian ethics as a post-Levinasian problematic: where Levinas grounds ethics in the face's appeal, Lacan splits the other's face into culturally intelligible attributes and the anxiety-producing strangeness of das Ding, reorienting ethical concern from pluralistic tolerance to the encounter with the "inhuman" other and a resurgence of universalist ethics.

     those culturally intelligible qualities that 'can be formulated as an attribute'—that make the other more or less 'like' us, thereby facilitating our capacity to relate to it as an entity whose existential struggles resemble our own.

589. #589

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.204

     8. *The Sublimity of Love* > *Making the Sublime "Appear"* > *The Other as "Evil"*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that a properly Lacanian ethics requires risking one's symbolic and imaginary supports to endure the other's singular, potentially "evil" jouissance — a demand that goes beyond inter-subjective empathy or moral prudence, and that finds partial (but insufficient) precedent in Levinas's notion of the face as absolute singularity.

     Levinas fails to include into the scope of 'human' is . . . the inhuman itself: a dimension which eludes the face-to-face relationship

590. #590

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec

     **The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan** > **The Mirror as Screen**

     Theoretical move: Copjec argues that the Lacanian gaze is not a confirming, panoptic presence but a blind, non-validating point of impossibility that constitutes the subject as a desiring, guilty, and anchored being—one structurally cut off from the Other rather than identified with it, and whose narcissism and fantasy merely circumnavigate a constitutive absence.

     The subject is, then, thought to identify with and thus, in a sense, to coincide with the gaze... And the subject, instead of coinciding with or identifying with the gaze, is rather cut off from it.

591. #591

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec

     <span id="Copj_9781781688892_epub_nts_r1.htm_page237"><span id="Copj_9781781688892_epub_nts_r1.htm_pg237" class="pagebreak" title="237"></span></span>**Notes** > **Chapter 2**

     Theoretical move: This endnotes section for Chapter 2 develops the theoretical argument that the gaze arises from linguistic rather than voyeuristic/fetishistic assumptions, that the cinema is better understood through the concept of the "nonspecularizable" than through the mirror/screen analogy, and that a properly Lacanian account of the subject requires distinguishing the unreturned gaze from imaginary identification and aggressivity.

     the subject's mirror identification can be with another child... one always locates one's own image in another

592. #592

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.172

     **Locked Room/Lonely Room: Private Space in Film Noir** > **The Locked-Room Paradox and the Group**

     Theoretical move: Copjec uses Miller's reading of Frege via Lacan to argue that the locked-room paradox in detective fiction is the literary form of the suture operation: the corpse functions as objet petit a—the non-empirical, interior limit of the series—without which neither counting nor the modern social group is possible, thereby countering Foucauldian/historicist accounts that reduce concealment to a fiction of panoptic power.

     members of a modern nation do not fall under the concept 'citizens of X' but under the concept 'identical to the concept citizens of X.'

593. #593

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec

     **Cutting Up**

     Theoretical move: Copjec argues that contemporary theory's reduction of the psychic-social relation to a pleasure-principle model (where the social order constructs desiring subjects through narcissistic identification) expels the Real; against this, she proposes that it is the death drive—not pleasure—that causally unites the psychic and the social, with the Real as irreducible remainder that resists incorporation into any representational apparatus.

     The construction of the subject depends, then, on the subject's taking social representations as images of its own ideal being, on the subject's deriving a 'narcissistic pleasure' from these representations.

594. #594

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.22

     **The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan** > **The Screen as Mirror**

     Theoretical move: Copjec argues that film theory's apparatus theory (Baudry, Metz, Heath et al.) collapses the Lacanian Imaginary into a purely positive, self-confirming mirror relation, thereby eliminating the split subject and conflating Foucauldian/Althusserian law with psychoanalytic desire—a conflation that destroys the psychoanalytic distinction between the effect and the realization of the law, and evacuates any genuinely psychoanalytic subject from the theory.

     The subject first recognizes itself by identifying with the gaze and then recognizes the images on the screen.

595. #595

     Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists · Joan Copjec · p.182

     **Locked Room/Lonely Room: Private Space in Film Noir** > **Detour through the Drive**

     Theoretical move: The shift from classical detective fiction to film noir is theoretically recast not as a narrative inversion of identification but as a structural choice between desire (sense, language, lack) and drive (being, jouissance), homologized through Freud's fort/da game and mapped onto a broader historical transition from an Oedipal order of desire to a contemporary order of commanded jouissance with political consequences.

     One of the most common descriptions of the historical shift between these two worlds makes identification the pivotal term... I am proposing that the inversion... is to be understood not in terms of identification but in terms of the choice between sense and being.

596. #596

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.125

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c09_r1.xhtml_page_117" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="117"></span>*9*

     Theoretical move: Through the analytic session, the passage traces how a lifelong pattern of self-imposed exile and isolation—from family, from intimacy, from presence—constitutes a compulsive repetition that the analysand only recognizes as such mid-session, connecting childhood withdrawal to adult philosophical "theoria" and forcing a revision of his idealized self-narrative.

     I've always identified with that loneliness. When I was in graduate school and immersed in my dissertation, I revisited the Lawrence obsession.

597. #597

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.160

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c11_r1.xhtml_page_143" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="143"></span>*11*

     Theoretical move: The passage performs an analytic move of self-accusation in which the author recognises that his systematic disavowal of his own anger operated as a defence mechanism that produced 'sham harmony,' and theorises that his son may have assumed the very aggressive current the father repudiated—an 'inverting mirror' dynamic that links parental repression to the child's symptom.

     But was I seeing in my son, as in an inverting mirror, a force of rage that I couldn't tolerate in myself?

598. #598

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.50

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c05_r1.xhtml_page_39" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="39"></span>*5*

     Theoretical move: The passage performs a live demonstration of free association on the analytic couch, illustrating how the analyst's minimal interventions (repetition, silence, well-timed questions) function as quilting points that retroactively reorganize the analysand's speech, and how the unconscious says more than is consciously intended—the most basic tenet Lacan's teaching according to the author.

     'Maybe you hoped that you and Oliver might be as close as your father had been with his father.'

599. #599

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.216

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c15_r1.xhtml_page_207" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="207"></span>*15*

     Theoretical move: The passage performs a clinical-psychoanalytic move in which dream-work becomes the site for recognizing disavowed aggression and tracing an intergenerational transmission of denied ambition; the analyst's intervention forces the analysand to own the dream's transformative energy as his own, turning the dream from passive observation into an act of unconscious desire.

     Was the bullet that I had fired into the head of that turtle, the act that I seem to have spent my life denying, the bullet that finally killed my son?

600. #600

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.280

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c20_r1.xhtml_page_273" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="273"></span>*20*

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that relinquishing the demand to know—including the unknowable reasons behind a loved one's suicide—paradoxically enables a deeper form of love and presence; the void opened by death becomes the very condition for renewed intimacy, structurally paralleling Lacanian insights about lack as constitutive of desire and the Real as that which always escapes symbolization.

     I sometimes hear his voice echo in my own. I see things through his eyes... Even some portion of his admirable openness to strangers seems to have enduringly woven itself into my character.

601. #601

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.193

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c13_r1.xhtml_page_182" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="182"></span><span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c13_r1.xhtml_page_183" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="183"></span>*13*

     Theoretical move: The passage uses a first-person account of a psilocybin research session to enact, at the level of lived experience, a dissolution of the boundaries between self and other, reality and unreality, life and death—culminating in an identification with the dead son that functions as a form of grief-work running parallel to, and impatient with, the formal analytic process.

     I've become a heroin addict. This, I thought, is what Oliver experienced! [...] I have sunk into addiction myself... even momentarily to be him.

602. #602

     Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son's Suicide · Richard Boothby · p.154

     <span id="Boot_9781635422610_epub3_c11_r1.xhtml_page_143" class="pagebreak" role="doc-pagebreak" title="143"></span>*11*

     Theoretical move: Through an analytic session, the author uncovers that his "happy-boy" persona is a symptomatic compromise-formation: a fantasy that simultaneously conceals inner rage and sadness, collapses the imaginary distance he constructed between himself and his brother, and condenses three traumatic bullet-wounds (turtle, dream, son's suicide) into a single chain of guilt—demonstrating how fantasy, symptom, and the timelessness of the unconscious conspire in the structure of neurosis.

     By my own act, the distance that I had constructed between us collapsed. I had become him.

603. #603

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.255

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 5 </span><span id="ch5.xhtml_p241" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 241. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>Figurations of the *Objet a* > Between the Look and the Gaze

     Theoretical move: By contrasting Lacan's triadic structure of the gaze (subject / visual object / gaze as third locus) with Sartre's dyadic "look," Boothby argues that the objet a operates as an invisible third term within the scopic drive, functioning precisely through its unattainability to perpetually re-energize visual desire rather than satisfying it.

     the promise of an identification with the beautiful model who embodies it

604. #604

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.184

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > Toward a Lacanian Theory of Sacrifice

     Theoretical move: Boothby argues that sacrifice's general function is to establish the operation of the signifier: it pivots between the imaginary and the symbolic by enacting a violation of bodily wholeness (castration logic) that simultaneously founds a system of signifiers, the law of exchange, and the big Other — thereby integrating prior anthropological theories of sacrifice into a single Lacanian account.

     A Lacanian conception of sacrifice makes new sense of the function of identification that underlies the relation of the sacrificer to the body of the victim.

605. #605

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.270

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 5 </span><span id="ch5.xhtml_p241" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 241. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>Figurations of the *Objet a* > Why One and One Make Four

     Theoretical move: By mapping gestalt concepts (figure/ground) onto the Schema R and contrasting it with Schema L, Boothby argues that symbolic castration is the process of "demotivation" that opens the real between the imaginary axis (m-i) and the symbolically mediated axis (I-M), distinguishing the fuller picture of the Oedipus complex from the neurotic, analytic situation mapped by Schema L.

     the ego ideal is precisely a function of identification that moves beyond the imaginary, it is a shaping of identification that is at once unimagable

606. #606

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.196

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 4 </span><span id="ch4.xhtml_p191" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 191. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Thing > <span id="ch4.xhtml_p193" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 193. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>A Love Triangle

     Theoretical move: By arguing that the phallus as signifier is retroactively inscribed into the very formation of the narcissistic ego—simultaneously its last discovery and its originary motive—Boothby establishes that the Symbolic (and specifically the Name-of-the-Father/phallus) has priority over the Imaginary even at the most primitive level of ego formation, grounding this in Lacan's retroactive temporality (Nachträglichkeit) and its Freudian precedent in trauma theory.

     the signifier of the phallus is retroactively insinuated into the process by which the narcissistic core of the personality is formed... must be said to be, in accordance with a strange temporality, the motive for that identification.

607. #607

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.123

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 2 </span><span id="ch2.xhtml_p71" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 71. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>Between the Image and the Word > Circulation in the Psychical Apparatus

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's imaginary-symbolic distinction can be recast as a theory of "circulation" within the psychical apparatus, where clinical structures (neurosis, psychosis) represent specific breakdowns or arrests in this dialectical interplay, and where analytic work consists in repunctuating discourse to restore proper circulation between the two registers.

     We have already pointed to the parallel between Freud's concept of object cathexis and that of imaginary identification.

608. #608

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.213

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 4 </span><span id="ch4.xhtml_p191" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 191. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Thing > Thing or No-thing

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that *das Ding* is not merely Freud's technical term for the unknowable kernel of perception, but the Real core inhabiting the very heart of the Imaginary, thereby redefining the imaginary as the power of the veil (appearance over emptiness) and sublimation as the art of making das Ding simultaneously present and absent — with 'extimacy' as the structural name for this paradox.

     The images around which the subject first mobilizes its own identity and in which it first positions itself with respect to its desire are fraught with an essential misrecognition.

609. #609

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.172

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > Language Acquisition and the Oedipus Complex

     Theoretical move: Boothby argues that the Oedipal transformation is best understood structurally as a labor of the death drive that deconstructs imaginary identification and installs the child in the symbolic order, linking castration anxiety, superego formation, and jouissance into a coherent Lacanian re-reading of Freudian metapsychology.

     'The Oedipal identification,' he claims, 'is that by which the subject transcends the aggressivity that is constitutive of the primary subjective individuation'

610. #610

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.177

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > <span id="ch3.xhtml_p175" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 175. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>Psychoanalysis and the Theory of Sacrifice

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that a Lacanian perspective can bridge the anthropological divide between violent (immolatory) and non-violent (votive) forms of sacrifice, and that psychoanalysis—particularly via the death drive—offers a unifying framework for understanding ritual killing as a constitutive moment of human subjectivity; a survey of anthropological theories (Smith, Tylor, Hubert/Mauss, Bataille) prepares the ground for this Lacanian intervention.

     other observers have corroborated Smith's supposition of an identification between the sacrificer and the victim.

611. #611

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.140

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > <span id="ch3.xhtml_p134" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 134. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Formative Power of the Image

     Theoretical move: Boothby argues that Lacan's concept of the Imaginary is not a departure from but a deepening of Freud's own metapsychological commitments — specifically the prematurity of birth, the bodily ego, the ego-object bipolarity of libidinal economy, and the irreducible narcissistic resistance to change — showing that the Imaginary theorises what Freud left implicit.

     the bipolarity of the ego and its objects, from one point of view a relation of mutual exclusion, from another viewpoint a relation of co-constitution

612. #612

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.135

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > <span id="ch3.xhtml_p134" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 134. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Formative Power of the Image

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Lacanian Imaginary—centered on the unifying power of the mirror-stage gestalt—is the indispensable complement to the Symbolic, and that it is precisely this imaginary function (the organism's detachment from instinct via perceptual form) that explains the constancy, variability, and "perverse" character of the human drive as distinct from animal instinct.

     it manifests the affective dynamism by which the subject originally identifies himself with the visual Gestalt of his own body

613. #613

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.145

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > <span id="ch3.xhtml_p141" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 141. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>Imaginary Alienation

     Theoretical move: Imaginary alienation is constitutive of the ego itself—not merely a social effect—because the mirror-stage form positively excludes pulsional energies and splits the subject from its own desire; the Symbolic (speech, the signifier) is what mediates and partially counters this primary self-alienation, repositioning Freud's ego/id dichotomy as an ego/subject split grounded in the signifier rather than in vitalist biology.

     '[Freud] wrote Das Ich und Das Es,' Lacan claims, 'in order to maintain this fundamental distinction between the true subject of the unconscious and the ego as constituted in its nucleus by a series of alienating identifications'

614. #614

     The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief · Peter Rollins · p.29

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>THE FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL > <span id="contents.html_page_vii"></span>CONTENTS > Abraham and absolute fidelity

     Theoretical move: By aligning Abraham and Judas as structurally parallel figures—both divinely chosen for a murderous act, both renouncing an intimate—the passage argues that the distinction between betrayer and faithful servant collapses into a difference of perceived motive rather than actual deed, thereby reframing betrayal as a possible mode of absolute fidelity.

     we can imagine the creation of a possible novel related to the Passion in which Jesus convinces Judas to commit the betrayal by relating the story of Abraham and Isaac.

615. #615

     The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief · Peter Rollins · p.27

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>THE FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL > <span id="contents.html_page_vii"></span>CONTENTS > Opposites attract

     Theoretical move: The passage performs a dialectical reversal by positioning Abraham and Judas—conventionally figured as opposites (faith vs. betrayal)—as potentially intimate counterparts, thereby destabilizing the conventional identification of fidelity with doctrinal submission and opening the question of whether betrayal can itself be a mode of faith.

     Surely then, if there is a human being whom we should model our lives upon it is Abraham, the famous father of faith, rather than Judas, the infamous betrayer of it.

616. #616

     The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief · Peter Rollins

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>THE FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL > <span id="contents.html_page_vii"></span>CONTENTS > Beyond believe, behave, belong

     Theoretical move: The passage argues for inverting the standard Christian order of belief→behavior→belonging into belonging→behavior→belief, grounding this reversal in a radically subjective, unlocalizable 'miracle' of transformation; it draws on a Hebraic model of communal ritual and interpretive wrestling to contend that authoritative, objectified belief actually undermines truth, and recruits Pascal's Wager to show that entering communal practice is the proper site for the miracle of faith rather than doctrinal assent.

     The infant, in a healthy environment, begins her life with absolute, unconditional acceptance. The infant belongs to the family as the family now belongs to the infant.

617. #617

     The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief · Peter Rollins

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>THE FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL > <span id="contents.html_page_vii"></span>CONTENTS > <span id="chapter005.html_page_90"></span>Creation of distance between believer and the source of the believer’s faith

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that treating Christian faith as an externalizable set of objective facts introduces a distorting subject/object distance, and that authentic faith requires existential implication rather than detached reflection — thus the language of traditional theology and philosophy is inadequate to faith's nature.

     Believers are, as we shall explore in the next chapter, implicated in their faith, immersed in it, overwhelmed by it.

618. #618

     The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief · Peter Rollins

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>THE FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL > <span id="contents.html_page_vii"></span>CONTENTS > Wrestling with God

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that fidelity to God within the Judeo-Christian tradition is structurally constituted by wrestling with, contradicting, and even disobeying God — introducing a paradox in which betrayal and fidelity are not opposites but mutually implicated, and obedience itself can demand disobedience.

     The people of God do not merely adopt this name; they are inscribed within it and they affirm it in the fabric of their lives.

619. #619

     The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief · Peter Rollins · p.161

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>THE FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL > <span id="contents.html_page_vii"></span>CONTENTS > Communities that embrace the miracle

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Christian truth is not a propositional content but an experiential transformation ("miracle") analogous to rebirth, and on this basis proposes reordering ecclesial community around belonging and shared ritual rather than belief-first structures — a move that repositions truth as an approach (demanding liberation/healing) rather than a fixed doctrinal content.

     communities that celebrate belonging to one another in the undergoing and aftermath of the miracle, a belonging that manifests itself in communally agreed rituals, creeds, and activities

620. #620

     The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales · Peter Rollins

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>The Orthodox Heretic > <span id="introduction.html_page_ix"></span>INTRODUCTION > <span id="chapter032.html_page_176"></span><span class="small">COMMENTARY</span>

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the ethical act is self-justifying (its own reward), and that unconditional gift-giving retroactively creates the conditions for its own justification — a logic illustrated parabolically and then extended to a second tale where the heretic's final act exposes the universal guilt of his accusers by demanding an innocent executioner.

     I stand before you now, helpless as a child, condemned to death for heresy. I am guilty as charged, for I have held a distorted, muddied, and inaccurate view of the divine.

621. #621

     The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales · Peter Rollins

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>The Orthodox Heretic > <span id="introduction.html_page_ix"></span>INTRODUCTION > <span id="chapter020.html_page_114"></span><span class="small">COMMENTARY</span>

     Theoretical move: The passage argues, via parable and Biblical exegesis, that genuine fidelity to a teaching requires its betrayal or transgression — pure identification with the Master's words is itself the deepest form of betrayal — and that divine power operates by always siding with the excluded and marginalized, even at the cost of its own defeat.

     The fact that you have never betrayed my teachings, and the fact that you swear never to betray them: this is to betray them already.

622. #622

     The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales · Peter Rollins

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>The Orthodox Heretic > <span id="introduction.html_page_ix"></span>INTRODUCTION > <span id="chapter029.html_page_163"></span><span class="small">COMMENTARY</span>

     Theoretical move: The passage uses a parabolic/theological mode to argue that divine wisdom, when progressively distilled, reduces to a single operative word—"love"—and that this unconditional love is demonstrated precisely toward figures of failure (Judas), subverting the reader's tendency toward self-righteous identification with the virtuous.

     I wanted to play with our tendency to identify with the favorable characters in the Bible. For instance, when reading about the self-righteous Pharisee and the humble tax collector, we find it all too easy to condemn the first and praise the second

623. #623

     The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales · Peter Rollins · p.183

     <span id="title.html_page_iii"></span>The Orthodox Heretic > <span id="introduction.html_page_ix"></span>INTRODUCTION > <span class="small">COMMENTARY</span>

     Theoretical move: Rollins argues that all theological speech is irreducibly distorted, and that the honest admission of this distortion ("orthodox heresy") is epistemically and ethically superior to the dogmatic claim to accurate God-talk ("heresy of orthodoxy"); the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy is thereby redrawn as a distinction between two kinds of heresy.

     none of those gathered would wish to claim that they were without sin, a claim that would be patently false

624. #624

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.240

     The Writing on the Wall > **No Matter** > **Otto's Dirty Syringe**

     Theoretical move: The passage performs a close reading of Freud's Irma dream to show how the dream-work's mechanisms of displacement and metonymy allow Freud to redirect reproach and anxiety outward onto colleagues, while the concept of Nachträglichkeit (retroactive re-signification) reveals how the dream retrospectively crystalizes an earlier "obscure impression" into a legible accusation—ultimately functioning as wish-fulfillment that acquits Freud and vindicates his professional identity.

     'I was not to blame for Irma's pains, since she herself was to blame... I was not concerned with Irma's pains... Irma's pains had been caused by Otto'

625. #625

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.246

     The Writing on the Wall > **Mixing Subjects**

     Theoretical move: Through the concept of *l'immixtion des sujets* (inmixing of subjects), Lacan distinguishes two structural moments in Freud's Irma dream: first, the imaginary decomposition of the ego into identificatory fragments (a polycephalic crowd), and second, the emergence of an acephalic, unconscious speaking subject ("Nemo") at the symbolic level, whose voice exceeds the ego and culminates in the purely signifying, graphic inscription of the trimethylamine formula — thereby grounding the unconscious as a phenomenon of the Symbolic Order that is irreducible to egocentric interpretation.

     the imaginary plurality of the subject, of the fanning out, the blossoming of the different identifications of the ego

626. #626

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.57

     Barbers and Philosophers > **Poorly Provisioned Parrots** > **The Age of Distinctions**

     Theoretical move: Kierkegaard's critique of Danish Hegelianism hinges on the classical alazon/eiron distinction: the chattering systematicians embody the alazon's prideful self-ignorance, while Socratic irony (eironeia) marks the eccentric wisdom of those who distinguish between what they understand and what they do not—a distinction that Hegelian sublation (Aufhebung), misapplied by parroting disciples, collapses into mere gossip.

     Champions of assimilating chatter, as we have seen, include ancient barbers, Greek sophists, Gert Westphaler, Hegel, and the latter's Danish parrots. And champions of eccentric wisdom... include Socrates, Hamann, and, by association, Kierkegaard himself.

627. #627

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.128

     Fuzzy Math > **Babble Dabble** > **Maundering Equivocation**

     Theoretical move: Kierkegaard's analysis of Adler's case demonstrates how Hegelian speculative thought produces "dialectical equivocation" — a structural confusion between subjective experience and objective religious authority, between divine logos and public opinion — which degrades authentic religious commitment into probabilistic "preacher-prattle" oriented toward social comfort rather than truth.

     More than a Hegelian scholar posing as a Christian apostle, Adler was a 'vacillating person' struggling to serve two masters

628. #628

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.259

     The Writing on the Wall > First and Final Words > **The Opening Song of Analysis**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that empty speech, far from being merely deficient, performs a foundational symbolic function—the formation of community and the assurance of being—thereby establishing it as the necessary opening condition of psychoanalysis rather than a mere obstacle to full speech.

     Even speech that is broken, useless, and apparently insignificant… allows for self-identification and mutual recognition.

629. #629

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.235

     The Writing on the Wall > **No Matter**

     Theoretical move: The passage uses Freud's dream of Irma's injection to argue that the nonsensical speech of Dr. M. ("no matter" / *macht nichts*) functions as an instance of Heideggerian everyday discourse (*alltägliche Rede*) that simultaneously voices and covers over anxiety about being-towards-death, thereby protecting Freud's professional identity while gesturing toward a constitutive void or *Nichts*.

     Irma's recalcitrance and its likeness to that of 'women with artificial dentures.' It was sickness, aging, and demise— all barriers to Freud's psychotherapeutic 'solution'

630. #630

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.253

     The Writing on the Wall > First and Final Words > **Where I Was**

     Theoretical move: By reading Lacan's spatial grammar of "where" (où) in his re-analysis of the dream of Irma's injection, the passage argues that the moi/je split is a topological-temporal event of resubjectivization: the subject's assumption of its history through speech addressed to another is the founding gesture of psychoanalytic technique.

     Freud's je dissolves his moi into a vast intellectual movement, representatives of which include Dr. M., Leopold, and Otto

631. #631

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.251

     The Writing on the Wall > **Ludicrous Talk, Encrypted Text**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan reads Freud's Irma dream as a linguistic progression from ludicrous ego-speech to encrypted unconscious text, using the je/moi distinction to show how the acephalic subject (je) annihilates the ego (moi), such that the dream's final Word enacts the dissolution of the speaking self into the unconscious.

     the ghastly discovery in Irma's mouth splinters Freud's professional identity into several ego identifications

632. #632

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.265

     The Writing on the Wall > First and Final Words > **Tessellations of Empty Speech**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that "empty speech" operates as a tessellation — a mechanical, recursive, senseless patterning of discourse (mapped through Lacan's reading of Freud's Irma dream) — structurally analogous to herringbone designs and automata, thereby revealing the imaginary, ego-driven, and fundamentally alogos character of everyday talk.

     The cost of his professional absolution is his disappearance into an egomorphic crowd— a polycephalic figure composed of rigid yet brittle identifications.

633. #633

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.245

     The Writing on the Wall > **No Matter** > *Mene¯, Mene¯, Teke¯ l, Upharsin*

     Theoretical move: The passage traces Lacan's re-analysis of Freud's dream of Irma's injection as a structural pivot from imaginary ego-object dialogue to a traumatic encounter with the Real, using the biblical *Mene, Tekel, Peres* as an interpretive parallel to show how the dream stages the decentering of the subject in relation to the ego and the decomposition of imaginary identifications.

     'All these characters are significant, in that each of them is the site of an identification whereby the ego is formed,' Lacan goes on to explain

634. #634

     The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk · Samuel McCormick · p.273

     A Play of Props

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the alliterative chain "propyl, propyls…propionic acid" in Freud's Irma dream is not mere phonetic noise but a quilting point that crystallizes the therapeutic passage from empty speech to full speech, and that the concept of repetition—as theorized by both Freud and Lacan—is the key to unlocking this bridge between their otherwise distinct analyses.

     Freud's polycephalic self, as embodied in the ego identifications of Leopold, Dr. M., and Otto

635. #635

     The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.105

     Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

     Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that comic suspense differs from thriller suspense by beginning *after* the catastrophe (an "overrealization"), and that this structural feature is the mechanism by which comedy suspends the big Other, introducing a surplus-object that irreversibly alters the symbolic coordinates when the Other is reinstated — a thesis illustrated through Molière's *Amphitryon* and Shakespeare's *Comedy of Errors*, where the restored Other is not the same Master but one stripped of its authority.

     Good examples of this are two classical comedies of mistaken identity: Molière's Amphitryon... and Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors.

636. #636

     The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.43

     part i

     Theoretical move: Zupančič argues, via Hegel, that comedy is not the opposition of the concrete to the universal but the universal's own self-alienation and self-actualization as subject; true comedy produces a "short circuit" in which the ego-ideal is revealed as the comic partial object itself, enacting disidentification rather than identification.

     the process of identification with the partial feature is, by virtue of its comic character, always also the process of disidentification

637. #637

     The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.118

     Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

     Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that in Marivaux's comedy, access to the Real is achieved not by stripping away symbolic fiction but by *redoubling* it — a "dialectical" move whereby the doubling of the imaginary mirror-turn produces an inner, minimal difference constitutive of the Symbolic, opening a space for the Other as immanent to the situation rather than as its outer horizon.

     Mixed and confused identities in Marivaux are mostly not—despite the preeminent role of the masquerade—in the service of a carnivalesque enabling of transgressions.

638. #638

     The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.88

     Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite

     Theoretical move: The passage uses Molière's *Amphitryon* (after Plautus) to argue that comedy stages the ego as an object in the world—comical precisely because it is one object among others—and that the double (the *sosie*) dramatizes the ego's constitutive instability: its identity is neither self-grounding nor exclusive, but immediately reversible between master and servant, and dissoluble under external pressure, linking ego-structure to the Pleasure Principle and the mirror dynamic.

     He tells him, in the 'first person,' some more intimate things that only ego-Sosie knows, and the latter slowly starts to believe that this other, intruding ego is perhaps indeed 'himself.'

639. #639

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     Notes

     Theoretical move: This passage consists of translator's notes and editorial annotations to Freud's "The Ego and the Id," clarifying key terminological and conceptual issues including the Ego/Id distinction, the bodily ego, identification, the Oedipus complex, narcissism, and drive de-merging — but does not itself advance a theoretical argument beyond philological and translational clarification.

     The substitution of identification for object-choice has an interesting parallel in the belief of primitive peoples… that when an animal is eaten, its qualities accrue to the eater

640. #640

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: The introduction argues that Freudian erotic theory is fundamentally a theory of repetition compulsion: libidinal life is structured by the unattainable lost (maternal) object, narcissistic fascination, and the superego's demand for punishment, such that the compulsion to repeat past fixations makes genuine erotic liberation—and by extension political freedom—structurally impossible.

     In love, the object after all takes the place of the super-ego.

641. #641

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and its Forms of Dependence

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the ego's precarious position between id, super-ego, and external world is structured by a dynamic of drive de-mergence: sublimation and identification unleash destructive drives within the super-ego, turning morality itself into a product of the death drive's catabolism, while castration fear is identified as the nuclear core of all anxiety (consciential, fear of death, neurotic).

     The super-ego, as we know, resulted from an identification with the father qua paradigm. Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even a sublimation.

642. #642

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     I

     Theoretical move: Freud establishes the theoretical necessity of a primary narcissism by tracing the concept from its clinical origins through schizophrenia, childhood, and "primitive" thought, thereby justifying the differentiation of ego-libido from object-libido and grounding psychoanalysis in empirical observation rather than speculative theory.

     the form of narcissism that arises as a result of the incorporation of object-cathexes is a secondary one that develops on top of a primary one rendered obscure by a variety of different influences.

643. #643

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and the Super-Ego (the Ego-Ideal)

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the super-ego/ego-ideal is the heir to the Oedipus complex, formed by internalizing the paternal prohibition and thus perpetuating both individual and phylogenetic inheritance within the psyche; this move simultaneously grounds religion, morality, and the social sense in the dynamics of identification and repression rather than in any transcendent 'higher nature'.

     Since their hostile impulses cannot be gratified, an identification with their erstwhile rival comes into being.

644. #644

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     VII

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that anxiety in phobias and obsessional neurosis is fundamentally a signal-reaction by the ego to the danger of castration (or its derivatives), and that symptoms are produced not to avoid fear itself but to avoid the danger situation that fear signals — a clarification that also forces a revision of drive theory by acknowledging that drives never appear in pure form but always in mixtures of Eros and the destruction drive.

     Just as the super-ego is the father in depersonalized form

645. #645

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     The Two Types of Drives

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the ego's sublimation of object-libido into ego-libido constitutes secondary narcissism and operates paradoxically against Eros by desexualizing it, while the death drive's relative silence means life's noise comes primarily from Eros and its ongoing battle with the pleasure principle—a configuration that ultimately vindicates the fundamental dualism of drives.

     the ego deals with the initial object-cathexes of the id... by taking their libido into itself and annexing it to the ego-alteration brought about by identification

646. #646

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     III

     Theoretical move: Freud theorizes the dynamic economy of narcissism by mapping the reciprocal flows between ego-libido and object-libido: self-feeling (self-esteem) rises and falls with narcissistic investment, the ego-ideal mediates this economy by imposing repression on object-choice, and the social/mass dimension of the ego-ideal is grounded in redirected homosexual libido and guilty conscience.

     The person then enacts the narcissistic type of object-choice by loving what he once was but has meanwhile forfeited, or by loving whatever possesses the qualities that he himself doesn't have at all.

647. #647

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and the Super-Ego (the Ego-Ideal)

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the ego's identifications with lost objects—culminating in the Oedipus complex's resolution—produce a differentiated agency within the ego (the super-ego/ego-ideal), and that this mechanism of converting object-libido into narcissistic libido via identification is the general pathway for sublimation and character formation.

     the character of the ego is a residual imprint of the object-cathexes that have been given up, and contains the entire history of those object-choices.

648. #648

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     Notes

     Theoretical move: This is an editorial notes section providing translator's annotations, textual clarifications, and cross-references for Freud's texts (primarily *The Ego and the Id* and *Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear*); the most theoretically substantive note (83) elaborates on the technique for handling unconscious guilt-feeling, identification, the ego-ideal, and the limits of psychoanalytic therapy.

     One stands a particularly good chance of influencing it if this Ucs guilt-feeling is a 'borrowed' one, i.e. the result of identification with some other person who was once the object of an erotic cathexis.

649. #649

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     III

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the ego-id distinction is relational rather than absolute — the ego is the organized portion of the id — and uses this to explain how repression generates symptoms that achieve 'exterritoriality' from the ego-organization, initiating a secondary defensive battle in which the ego oscillates between incorporating the symptom and continuing to repress it, a dynamic reinforced by secondary illness-gain.

     The ego is peaceable, and seeks to incorporate the symptom, to absorb it into its own system.

650. #650

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: The passage uses Falstaff and Rosalind as exemplary figures of a psychoanalytically-inflected imagination that resists both the regressive superego (Falstaff's demystification of paternal authority) and the oceanic id (Rosalind's complication of erotic reduction), arguing that Shakespearean imagination offers an alternative to Freud's resigned acceptance of civilizational constraint.

     Quickly – we see where the power lies in this analysis – he usurps Falstaff's position and takes the role of his own father.

651. #651

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     Addenda

     Theoretical move: Freud differentiates three reactions to object-loss—fear, pain, and sorrow—by mapping each onto distinct economic and developmental conditions: fear responds to the danger of object-loss, pain arises from intensely cathected longing that mimics peripheral stimulation, and sorrow is triggered by the reality-test's demand to withdraw cathexis from a definitively lost object.

     The subject's notion of his object, highly cathected by his needs, plays the same role as a part of the body cathected by an increase in stimulus.

652. #652

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     II

     Theoretical move: Freud establishes narcissism as a structural feature of libido theory by triangulating three pathways—organic illness, hypochondria/paraphrenia, and love-life—to argue that ego-libido and object-libido are dynamically interconvertible, that primary narcissism is universal, and that the compulsion to invest in objects arises from a pathogenic surplus of ego-libido.

     they model their subsequent love-object not on their mother, but on their own person. They quite clearly seek themselves as love-object

653. #653

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     II

     Theoretical move: Freud uses the distinction between narcissistic and imitative (anaclitic) object-choice to theorize gender difference in love-life, arguing that female libidinal development tends toward intensified narcissism rather than object-love, and that parental love reveals itself as a structural repetition/resurgence of the parents' own abandoned primary narcissism.

     what we ourselves were, / c) what we would like to become, / d) a person who was once part of our own self

654. #654

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     Introduction

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Freud's theory of group psychology and repetition compulsion reveals all political life—liberal and authoritarian alike—as structured by transference onto leader-figures descended from the primal father, and that the therapeutic response (working-through rather than repeating) mirrors the dynamics staged in Shakespeare's Falstaff/Hal scenes, making literary play a potential rival to psychoanalytic cure.

     the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader

655. #655

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     The Ego and its Forms of Dependence

     Theoretical move: Freud argues that the superego's special severity derives from its dual origin—as the heir to the Oedipus complex and as a residue of the id's phylogenetic inheritance—and uses differential clinical presentations (negative therapeutic reaction, obsessional neurosis, melancholia, hysteria) to demonstrate how guilt-feeling, whether conscious or unconscious, operates as the superego's primary weapon against the ego, ultimately linking the superego's harshness to a harnessed death drive turned inward.

     the ego very largely develops out of identifications which take the place of cathexes generated by the id and then abandoned, and that the first such identifications routinely assume the role of a special judgemental entity within the ego

656. #656

     Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (alt. ed.) · Sigmund Freud

     The Two Types of Drives

     Theoretical move: Freud recapitulates his dualistic drive theory (Eros vs. death drive), articulates their fusion and de-mergence as the dynamic mechanism underlying libidinal regression, ambivalence, and neurotic phenomena, and introduces the concept of a displaceable, desexualized narcissistic libido that operates as a qualitatively indifferent energy serving the pleasure principle across both ego and id.

     feelings of rivalry leading to aggressive tendencies, feelings that have to be overcome before the hated object can become the loved object, or become the object of an identification

657. #657

     Reading Marx · Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda & Agon Hamza · p.136

     *Unexpected Reunions* > **Theory of Labor**

     Theoretical move: Against humanist-Marxist "dis-alienation," the passage argues—via a Hegelian reading—that alienation is constitutive of labor itself, not an external distortion to be overcome; "reconciliation" therefore means accepting the subject's loss of control over its own production, and communism cannot be conceptualized as the reappropriation of alienated substance.

     workers relate to their productions and between themselves in homogeneous fashion – products of labor reflect our plans for them, while also concerning mankind as a whole

658. #658

     Reading Marx · Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda & Agon Hamza

     *Unexpected Reunions* > **Theory of Labor**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Hegel's theory of abstract labor—whereby labor mechanizes, alienates, and ultimately imprints negativity onto objects—anticipates Marx's theory of automation and alienated labor, but cannot be simply mapped onto Marx without fundamentally revising his entire opus; crucially, the Master/Slave dialectic is "resolved" not through positive self-recognition in products but through the bondsman's absolute submission/fear, which transforms alienation into a knowledge of material constraints and thereby into a condition for freedom.

     if work was a matter of recognition and harmony between the creator and his creation, then what is imprinted in the object would be the positive traits of self-consciousness, that which one can grasp about oneself and therefore can equally recognize in the products of labor.

659. #659

     Reading Marx · Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda & Agon Hamza · p.66

     *Unexpected Reunions* > **Caving**^{**<a href="#chapter02.xhtml_fn-3" id="chapter02.xhtml_fn_3">3</a>**}

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that emancipatory thought is structurally indebted to Plato's cave allegory, which frames emancipation as a mythologized counter-myth requiring exit from naturalized conditions of disorientation; it then traces this structure through Descartes, Rousseau, Marx, and Badiou, proposing that capitalist society functions as a modern cave whose ideological enchainment is analogous to Platonic mimesis and sophistry.

     as soon as one starts imitating someone else . . . 'one cannot but adopt the identity of this other person.' And so 'one becomes what one enacts'

660. #660

     Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek · p.356

     **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > The Persistence of <span id="theorem_iv_the_persistence_of_abstraction.xhtml_IDX-17"></span>Abstraction > [How to Do Words with Things](#contents.xhtml_ahd23)

     Theoretical move: The subject is not merely related to a traumatic gap or rip in reality but IS that gap—a self-reflective reversal that reframes symbolic castration as the violent ontological opening that makes language's distance from reality possible; this crack of negativity then drives a critique of assemblage theory's virtual diagram, which must be amended to include essentially non-realized possibilities that are the impossible-real of any structure.

     subject identifies with its symptom in order to avoid its own ontological crisis, to resolve the deadlock of its inexistence, to supplement its lack of a firm ontological support

661. #661

     Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek · p.132

     **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > Sex as Our Brush with the Absolute > [Sexual Parallax and Knowledge](#contents.xhtml_ahd8)

     Theoretical move: Sexual difference as Real is not the difference between two positive entities but an immanent antagonism that precedes and constitutes both terms; the 'third element' (transgender, chimney sweep, objet a) does not supplement the binary but materialises the pure difference/antagonism itself, and the Other sex is merely the reflexive determination of the impossibility of the One.

     identifying as masculine or feminine is a psychic/symbolic act which can be at odds with one's biological identity (as proven by individuals ready to undergo sex change treatment).

662. #662

     Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek · p.257

     **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > The Three <span id="theorem_iii_the_three_unorientables.xhtml_IDX-862"></span><span id="theorem_iii_the_three_unorientables.xhtml_IDX-1095"></span><span id="theorem_iii_the_three_unorientables.xhtml_IDX-2455"></span>Unorientables > [From Cross-Cap to Klein Bottle](#contents.xhtml_ahd17)

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues, via a dialectical reading of the Universal/Particular relation, that sexual difference is not a difference between two species-identities but a constitutive antagonism that cuts within each sex, making every particular sexual identity a failed attempt to resolve an irreducible deadlock—and that ideologies of gender fluidity or "unlearning gender" evade rather than confront this constitutive impossibility captured in Lacan's "there is no sexual relationship."

     A sign for an identification with no identity or refusal of a name … is required if a stance in solidarity with those identifying as non-normative is to be registered.

663. #663

     Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek · p.349

     **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > The Persistence of <span id="theorem_iv_the_persistence_of_abstraction.xhtml_IDX-17"></span>Abstraction > [Madness, Sex, War](#contents.xhtml_ahd22)

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that abstract negativity is irreducible and constitutive rather than merely a moment to be sublated: war, madness, and the "Night of the World" all demonstrate that no organic social or conceptual reconciliation can contain the force of abstraction, and true Hegelian reconciliation is reconciliation *with* this irreducible excess of negativity itself. This revaluation of the Imaginary (as dismembering power) and of Understanding (as the absolute power of tearing apart) supports a non-synthetic, persistently negative reading of both Hegel and Lacan.

     imaginary identifications obfuscate the symbolic structural causality that regulates our lives.

664. #664

     Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek

     **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > Sex as Our Brush with the Absolute > [Plants, Animals, Humans, Posthumans](#contents.xhtml_ahd10)

     Theoretical move: The passage proposes a five-stage dialectical schema of sexuality's evolution—from asexual reproduction through symbolic redoubling to posthuman disintegration—where each stage marks a new mode of actualisation of sexual difference, culminating in the collapse of both biological and symbolic levels under posthuman conditions.

     threatened by the prospect of asexual symbolic identifications (but will such identifications still be symbolic?)

665. #665

     Sex and the Failed Absolute · Slavoj Žižek · p.416

     **Sex and the Failed Absolute** > Ibi <span id="corollary_4_ibi_rhodus_ibi_saltus.xhtml_IDX-952"></span>Rhodus Ibi Saltus! > [Four Ethical Gestures](#contents.xhtml_ahd28)

     Theoretical move: Through a close reading of Wagner's *Parsifal* — framed against historicist contextualization — Žižek argues that the opera's central ethical and libidinal drama turns on the obscene superego-jouissance of the father (Titurel as père-version), hysterical feminine subjectivity (Kundry), and the paradox of a wound that is simultaneously the mark of corruption and the source of immortal life-energy; Parsifal's salvation-gesture is grounded not in simple purity but in hysterical identification with the very suffering he refuses.

     this comically pathetic gesture of Parsifal is that of hysterical identification, i.e., a step into the hysterical theater

666. #666

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: Symbolic identification (ego-ideal, I(O)) dominates imaginary identification (ideal ego, i(o)) as the mechanism of socio-symbolic interpellation, but this quilting always leaves a remainder — the gap of 'Che vuoi?' — which marks the irreducible split between demand and desire and prevents full closure of the subject's integration into the symbolic order.

     It is this symbolic identification that dissolves the imaginary identification (makes the Bogart figure disappear) - more precisely: that radically changes its contents.

667. #667

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that ideology is not false consciousness about reality but reality itself insofar as it is sustained by non-knowledge; this is mapped onto Marx's "invention of the symptom" — the logic by which a particular element (e.g. labour-power, the proletariat) simultaneously belongs to and subverts a universal (freedom, equivalent exchange), with commodity fetishism explained as the structural displacement of fetishism from interpersonal domination to relations between things at the passage from feudalism to capitalism.

     a madman who believes himself to be a king is no more mad than a king who believes himself to be a king - who, that is, identifies immediately with the mandate 'king'

668. #668

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that ideology cannot be fully grasped through discourse analysis (interpellation/symbolic identification) alone; its ultimate support is a pre-ideological kernel of enjoyment structured in fantasy, and therefore ideology critique must be supplemented by a logic of enjoyment that 'traverses' social fantasy and identifies with the symptom — demonstrated through the case of anti-Semitism, where 'the Jew' functions as a fetish embodying the structural impossibility of 'Society'.

     to aim at grasping the efficiency of an ideology exclusively through the mechanisms of imaginary and symbolic identification

669. #669

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Hegelian move of "substance as subject" is accomplished not through increased activity but through an empty, purely formal gesture — the signifier — by which the subject assumes/repeats as its own act what has already happened; and it demonstrates this through the funeral rite, the Fall, and culminates in reading the phallus as the Lacanian signifier of this formal conversion, the "unity of opposites" where radical bodily externality passes into pure interiority of thought.

     by pretending that the given reality is already his work; by assuming responsibility for it.

670. #670

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The passage uses Hegel's three-stage logic of reflection (positing, external, determinate) as a model for textual hermeneutics and subject-formation, arguing that the 'beautiful soul' figure exposes the Hegelian lesson that the real act is always formal and prior—the subject must retroactively posit its own presuppositions—which distinguishes Hegel's idealist dialectics from Marx's materialist one.

     her real identification is with the formal structure of the intersubjective field which enables her to assume this role

671. #671

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacan's proposition "there is no metalanguage" must be taken literally—not as post-structuralist infinite self-referentiality, but as the necessity of an irreducible object (objet petit a) excluded from yet internal to the symbolic order; the "Lenin in Warsaw" joke illustrates the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz logic of the master signifier, while the conscript joke illustrates how the object is produced by, yet cannot be reduced to, the signifying texture itself.

     The punk imitating the 'sadomasochistic' power ritual is not to be conceived as a case of the victim's identification with the aggressor

672. #672

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: Žižek opposes Stalinist "evolutionary idealism" (grounded in the big Other of history as teleological accountant) to a "creationist materialism" derived from Benjamin and Lacan, showing that the death drive, retroactive signification, and the logic of objet petit a underpin both Benjamin's revolutionary rupture and the Stalinist Communist's "sublime body between the two deaths"; he further distinguishes the classical Master's performative legitimation from the totalitarian Leader's circular self-legitimation through the non-existent "People," arriving at a Lacanian definition of democracy as the structural emptiness of the place of power.

     the People are the 'real People' only in so far as they are embodied in their representative, the Party and its Leader

673. #673

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The subject is not a questioning force but an "answer of the Real" — the void produced when the Other's question exposes the ex-timate traumatic kernel (objet petit a / das Ding); this hystericization is constitutive of the subject, while interpellation/subjectivation functions as an attempt to evade this kernel through identification. Žižek further deploys Hitchcock's object-typology to distinguish the MacGuffin, the circulating real-object (objet petit a), and the phallic object, showing how the Real must irrupt to establish the symbolic structure.

     in assuming a symbolic mandate, in recognizing himself in the interpellation, the subject evades the dimension of the Thing.

674. #674

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: Fantasy is theorized as a double operation: it answers the unbearable gap of the Other's desire ('Che vuoi?') by filling the void with an imaginary scenario, while simultaneously constructing the very coordinates that make desire possible; this structure illuminates hysteria as failed interpellation, anti-Semitism as racist fantasy, Christianity vs. Judaism as contrasting strategies for 'gentrifying' the desire of the Other, and sainthood/Antigone as ethical positions of not giving way on one's desire.

     the incapacity of the subject to fulfil the symbolic identification, to assume fully and without restraint the symbolic mandate

675. #675

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     PREFACE

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the dialectical move is not enrichment through contextual totality but a productive mortification—a reduction to the 'unary feature'—through which the spirit is paradoxically reanimated; Žižek aligns Hegel's 'grey' conceptual simplification with Lacan's trait unaire as the shared logic of this reduction.

     what Lacan, referring to Freud, deployed as the reduction of a thing to le trait unaire [der einzige Zug, the unary feature]: we are dealing with a kind of epitomization by means of which the multitude of properties is reduced to a single dominant characteristic

676. #676

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Point de capiton functions as a 'rigid designator' — a pure, meaningless signifier that retroactively constitutes the identity of ideological objects — and that 'ideological anamorphosis' names the error by which this structural lack is misperceived as supreme plenitude of Meaning; the Objet petit a emerges as the real-impossible surplus correlative of this operation.

     until 'real' Americans start to identify themselves (in their ideological self-experience) with the image created by the Marlboro advertisement - until America itself is experienced as 'Marlboro country'.

677. #677

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: The passage advances a theory of the Graph of Desire's operation by showing that the point de capiton retroactively fixes meaning through the Master Signifier, and that this quilting operation grounds both ideology (as transferential illusion) and subjectivity (as the difference between imaginary identification with the ideal ego and symbolic identification with the ego-ideal/gaze of the Other).

     Here we have finally arrived at identification: I(O) stands for symbolic identification, for the identification of the subject with some signifying feature, trait (I), in the big Other, in the symbolic order.

678. #678

     The Sublime Object of Ideology · Slavoj Žižek

     INTRODUCTION

     Theoretical move: Žižek traces Lacan's theoretical development from symptom as symbolic/coded message to symptom as sinthome—the real kernel of enjoyment that is the subject's only ontological substance—arguing that this universalization of symptom (paired with a universalization of foreclosure) is Lacan's answer to the philosophical question of why there is something rather than nothing.

     That is why the final Lacanian definition of the end of the psychoanalytic process is identification with the symptom.

679. #679

     Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism · Russell Sbriglia & Slavoj Žižek (eds.) · p.192

     Who Cares? > The Human Object

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the drive — demonstrated through the Wolf Man's somatic symptom — escapes both correlationism and speculative realism by positing a strange materiality that "enjoys without thinking," locating the Freudian body as the inscription of drive upon organism, and positioning sexuality as the ontological lapse that anchors jouissance irreducibly in materiality without reducing it to mere physicality.

     When Freud later touches on a cluster of signifiers pertaining to Pankejeff's infantile identification with his mother

680. #680

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.38

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **The Other** Side **of Fontosy**

     Theoretical move: Fantasy operates through a necessary duality of positive and negative modes: the positive mode grants access to the impossible object while the negative mode preserves that object's desirability by keeping it threatened — and Lynch's cinematic crosscutting establishes the speculative identity of compassion and cruelty as structurally equivalent positions within this fantasmatic economy.

     No spectator watches The Elephant Man and identifies her/his relationship to Merrick with that of the night porter. The film allows us to identify with the gentler position of figures like Kendal and Treves.

681. #681

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.91

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > Fantasizing Reality

     Theoretical move: McGowan argues that fantasy is not an escape from reality but a solution to the torment of desire—it stages a determinate answer to the enigma of the Other's desire, thereby producing the very "sense of reality" that we mistake for the real world, while the Real is revealed precisely at the traumatic transition-point between desire and fantasy.

     In fan tasy, we produce an image of oursclves as we want to be-an ideal ego or imaginary identificabon.

682. #682

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.9

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > Wotching from a Distance

     Theoretical move: McGowan argues that mainstream cinema structurally produces a voyeuristic illusion of safe distance for the spectator, but this distance is always already undermined by the fact that the film's structure is organized around the spectator's desire—a condition Lynch's films uniquely make visible rather than disavow. The spectator's imaginary proximity is thus a mediated fiction that conceals their full enmeshment in the cinematic event.

     Through identification with the camera and characters, the spectator attains a sense of proximity and involvement with what transpires on the screen.

683. #683

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.19

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **The** Impossible David Lynch

     Theoretical move: Lynch's cinema achieves a distinctively Hegelian-Lacanian effect by separating the realms of desire and fantasy, immersing the spectator completely in the fantasmatic world until its traumatic underside is revealed, thereby enacting speculative identity (self-recognition in absolute otherness) and forcing an encounter with the Real as the impossible within the symbolic order.

     The total experience of fantasy that the Lynch film creates aims to trigger a spectator response of identification with the traumatic moment enacted within the fantasy.

684. #684

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.94

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > We Can Only Go So Far

     Theoretical move: Fantasy structures enjoyment only by maintaining the subject at a distance from its object—when the subject gets too close to fully "having" the fantasy object, the fantasy dissolves, revealing that its promise of direct access to enjoyment is constitutively illusory; the father/phallus functions as the necessary barrier that keeps fantasy operative, and his status is always already fantasmatic.

     Alice and Peter begin to have sex... Peter transforms back into Fred Madison. At the moment when Peter is about to 'have' Alice, he loses her: the fantasy dissolves, and he falls back into his identity before the fantasy.

685. #685

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.76

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **The Contradidory Status of l auro Polmer**

     Theoretical move: McGowan argues that Lynch's *Fire Walk with Me* reveals the speculative identity of the virgin/whore fantasy couple, showing that fantasy's enjoyment depends on the silent co-presence of its opposite, and that this recognition—ordinarily foreclosed by patriarchal ideology—opens the possibility of an ethical subjectivity.

     By filming Fire Walk with Me from the perspective of the subjectivized impossible object, Lynch offers us the opportunity to identify with it.

686. #686

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.11

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **Jean-Luc Godard as Alternativa**

     Theoretical move: The Brechtian/Godardian aesthetic of spectator distancing, while targeting the Imaginary in favour of the Symbolic, fails on two counts: it cannot eliminate desire entirely (the spectator must remain implicated), and it misses the Real gap within ideology that every fantasy both covers and, potentially, radicalises—a gap that Lynch's cinema, unlike Godard's, actually exploits.

     Mulvey's goal for radical filmmaking—'passionate detachment'—is a state in which the spectator thinks rather than blindly identifies.

687. #687

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.60

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > Fantasmatic Fathers

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that paternal figures (both ideal and nightmarish) function as fantasy constructions that domesticate the traumatic, unsignifiable desire of the feminine object, and that the homosocial bond between Jeffrey and Frank is structured as a retreat from this trauma—Frank's symbolic authority providing psychic relief precisely because Dorothy's desire for nothing threatens to dissolve fantasy structure altogether.

     Earlier, Frank tells Jeffrey, 'You're like me,' and before beating him, Frank smears lipstick all around his lips and kisses Jeffrey. The bond between them is the tie of shared retreat from Dorothy's desire.

688. #688

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.102

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **Fontosy ond Humiliotion**

     Theoretical move: Fantasy's ethical dimension lies not in its retreat from the Other but in the humiliation it compels: by externalizing one's innermost subjectivity, the fantasizing subject is exposed to the Other's look, and fully embracing rather than retreating from this exposure constitutes the genuine ethical act.

     The real kernel of the fantasy is the moment at which we fully identify with the impossible object and completely externalize our subjectivity.

689. #689

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.75

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **The Contradidory Status of l auro Polmer**

     Theoretical move: By "subjectivizing the impossible object-cause of desire" in *Fire Walk with Me*, Lynch forces spectators to inhabit the perspective of the fantasy object itself, revealing that at the core of that object is not plenitude but a fundamental emptiness—a void that destabilizes the cultural fantasy of femininity by collapsing its constitutive contradictions into a single figure.

     In doing so, we identify not with her as a substantial character but with her as an emptiness, experiencing the impossible perspective of the absent object.

690. #690

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.69

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > **Not Enough Fontosy**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the failure to fully commit to fantasy — epitomised by Sailor's investment in symbolic/phallic authority and Lula's investment in imaginary authority — is not a warning against fantasy but a demonstration of what is lost when subjects orient themselves toward the Other's recognition rather than following the logic of fantasy to its gap-exposing conclusion.

     The very identification with symbolic authority prevents him from fully embracing fantasy.

691. #691

     The Impossible David Lynch · Todd McGowan · p.139

     ,'\ru'/,¡/ ¡)(" ,.: '\';11." \,,'" .1, ,,( T H E *impossible* /h,-Ft'llItllc *Form* LUCr FI~CH~k **DAVID LYN CH** > 9, Navigating Mulholland Orive , David Lynch's Panegyric to Hollywood > **INDEX**

     Theoretical move: This is a book index — a non-substantive back-matter section listing proper names, film titles, and key theoretical concepts with page references. It contains no original theoretical argument.

     identification, 2, 5-7,166,214

692. #692

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.86

     <span id="page-53-0"></span>**The Lacanian Subject** > **Alienation, Separation, and the Traversing of Fantasy in the Analytic Setting**

     Theoretical move: The analytic setting operationalizes alienation and separation as clinical techniques: the analyst's enigmatic desire disrupts the analysand's fantasy ($ ◇ a), while the Freudian injunction "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" frames the Lacanian subject as ethically tasked with subjectifying the otherness of primal repression — making the subject appear where the drive/Other once dominated.

     the analysand identifying with the analyst as Other

693. #693

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.104

     <span id="page-101-0"></span>Object (a): Cause of Desire > *Imaginary Objects, Imaginary Relations*

     Theoretical move: The passage traces Lacan's early theorisation of the ego as imaginary object (*a*), showing how imaginary relations (love/identification and hate/rivalry) operate through the logic of same/different, and contrasts this with the later emergence of the real object cause of desire (objet petit a), while situating countertransference as an inescapably imaginary phenomenon that the analyst must set aside.

     Insofar as the other is like me, I love and identify with him or her, feeling his or her joy and pain as my own.

694. #694

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.56

     <span id="page-53-0"></span>**The Lacanian Subject** > **The Lacanian Subject Is Not the "Individual" or Conscious Subject of Anglo-American Philosophy**

     Theoretical move: The passage distinguishes the Lacanian subject from both the ego (as theorized in ego psychology) and the conscious subject of analytic philosophy, arguing that the ego is a narcissistic construct of crystallized ideal images whose very nature is distortion and error — making it precisely what the Lacanian subject is NOT.

     a fixed, reified object with which a child learns to identify, which a child learns to identify with him or herself

695. #695

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.135

     THE PHALLUS: ONE OF W~ S PARTNERS

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that S(A)—the signifier of the lack in the Other—functions as Woman's second "partner" in the sexuation table, and that its meaning has shifted in Lacan's work from a symbolic designator of the Other's desire to a real-register signifier of a primordial loss; this asymmetry grounds two distinct paths beyond neurosis (desire/masculine vs. sublimation/feminine) and implies that feminine subjectivity is constituted through an encounter with jouissance rather than through subjection to a master signifier.

     the successive identifications that constitute the ego (usually identifications with one or both parents), accounting for an imaginary level of sexual identity

696. #696

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.105

     <span id="page-101-0"></span>Object (a): Cause of Desire > <span id="page-105-0"></span>*The Other as Object, Symbolic Relations*

     Theoretical move: By tracing the analyst's proper position through a critique of both imaginary and symbolic identifications, Fink argues that situating the analyst as the omniscient Other of demand traps the analysand at the level of demand rather than desire, and that only by relinquishing the position of subject supposed to know—redirecting knowledge-authority to the analysand's own unconscious—can analysis constitute the subject as desiring rather than demanding.

     working through and thus dissipating imaginary identifications with members of the same sex.

697. #697

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.57

     <span id="page-53-0"></span>**The Lacanian Subject** > **The Lacanian Subject Is Not the Subject of the Statement**

     Theoretical move: By mapping Jakobson's linguistics of shifters onto psychoanalytic categories, Fink/Lacan demonstrates that the grammatical subject of a statement ("I") represents only the ego—the conscious, self-identifying instance—and not the split Lacanian subject, thereby opening the question of what agency disrupts the ego's enunciations.

     The personal pronoun 'I' designates the person who identifies his or her self with a specific ideal image.

698. #698

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.81

     <span id="page-53-0"></span>**The Lacanian Subject** > **A Further Separation: The Traversing of Fantasy**

     Theoretical move: The traversing of fantasy is theorized as a "further separation" in which the alienated subject paradoxically assumes its own traumatic cause—the Other's desire that produced it as split subject—thereby subjectifying jouissance and relocating from the position of effect to that of cause, in contrast to the Ego Psychology solution of identification with the analyst.

     Identification with the analyst's ideals and desires is a solution to neurosis advanced by certain analysts of the Anglo-American tradition... In Lacanian psychoanalysis, identification with the analyst is considered a trap

699. #699

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.234

     <span id="page-231-0"></span>**Index**

     Theoretical move: This is the index of Bruce Fink's *The Lacanian Subject*, listing key concepts, proper names, and page references — a non-substantive navigational apparatus with no original theoretical argumentation.

     Identification, 85, 116

700. #700

     The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.43

     part i

     Theoretical move: Župančič reads Hegel's account of comedy as the site where substance undergoes its own alienation and thereby becomes subject, such that comedy is not the undermining of the universal by the concrete but the universal's own self-movement — a theoretical move that reframes the comic as producing concrete universality rather than merely exposing its limits.

     in this kind of comedy, the process of identification with the partial feature is, by virtue of its comic character, always also the process of disidentification.

701. #701

     The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.78

     Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that comedy's formal mechanism is the sustained visibility of the split between the ego and the id (It), which is structurally produced through the comic "Character" — defined as an enjoying incarnation of a unary trait — whose passionate attachment to an object stretches and exposes the missing link between the signifier and jouissance that normally remains veiled in imaginary unity.

     we get to see only its signifying facet, and can identify with it insofar as its link with the enjoyment remains veiled

702. #702

     The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.38

     part i

     Theoretical move: The passage traces a dialectical movement from epic to tragedy to comedy in Hegel's Phenomenology, arguing that comedy does not merely expose the failure of representation but dissolves representation altogether by making the individual self coincide with essence—the universal is no longer separated from the actual self by the mask, but appears as the physical itself.

     the actual self of the actor coincides with what he impersonates (with his stage character), just as the spectator is completely at home in the drama performed before him and sees himself playing in it

703. #703

     The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.105

     Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

     Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that comic suspense is structurally distinct from thriller suspense because it begins *after* the catastrophe (an "overrealization"), and that this post-catastrophic surplus-object suspended in the comic action actually transforms the symbolic Other rather than simply restoring it—demonstrated through close readings of Molière's *Amphitryon* and Shakespeare's *Comedy of Errors*.

     this comedy, the suspension of the Other (of Jupiter, 'the boss of it all') from his heavenly office directly coincides with his appearance on the stage in the form of a surplus-other—of one husband too many, of an additional Amphitryon

704. #704

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.362

     The Academic Rumspringa, or, the Parallax of Power and Resistance > Over the Rainbow Coalition!

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that "culture war is class war in a displaced mode": the ideological coding of economic class antagonism as moral/cultural struggle (US populist conservatism) is not mere false consciousness or contingent hegemonic articulation, but is structurally overdetermined by class struggle as the "concrete universal" that determines how all other antagonisms (race, gender, religion) are articulated—while liberal multiculturalism, by seeking to translate antagonisms into differences, itself functions as an upper-class ideological tool.

     in their very form, the conservative-populist grass-roots campaigns took over the old Leftist-radical stance of the popular mobilization and struggle against upper-class exploitation

705. #705

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.246

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > The Unconscious Act of Freedom

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that (self-)consciousness is not the spontaneous emergent pattern of parallel cognitive agents but rather the experience of a gap or malfunction in that pattern, and that genuine transcendental freedom consists not in an empirically locatable founding act but in the retroactive positing of a primordial, unconscious decision—the subject being nothing but the void opened by the failure of reflection and self-identification, constituted only through the self-referential act of signification.

     Every recognition of the subject in an image or a signifying trait (in short: every identification) already betrays its core; every jubilant 'That's me!' already contains the seed of 'That's not me!'

706. #706

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.127

     The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > interlude 1

     Theoretical move: Žižek reads Henry James's late style as a literary enactment of the Hegelian passage from Substance to Subject, in which the nominalization of predicates desubstantializes the subject and the loss of ethical substance becomes the very condition for a higher, mediated ethics of intersubjective dependence—a move Žižek then generalizes into a "parallax gap" at the level of political antinomy.

     Deixis is not merely an ersatz for a previously introduced determinate person or thing; rather, it stands for an unnameable X (a kind of Kantian noumenal Thing—and let us not forget that 'thing' is another favored James term) which eludes all its qualifications.

707. #707

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.369

     The Academic Rumspringa, or, the Parallax of Power and Resistance > Welcome to the Desert of the American Subculture

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Abu Ghraib tortures were neither isolated criminal acts nor directly ordered, but rather the necessary obscene underside of official ideology — a "Code Red" transgression that is the constitutive supplement to public values of democracy and dignity, revealing how Power systematically generates and requires its own excess.

     such a code represents the 'spirit of community' at its purest, exerting the strongest pressure on individuals to enact group identification.

708. #708

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.263

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > interlude 2

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacanian analysis has surrendered its sociopolitical critical edge by seeking institutional recognition, while Hardt and Negri's biopolitical theory of the multitude commits a parallel theoretical error: by neglecting the dialectical role of capitalist *form*, they reproduce the ultimate capitalist fantasy of frictionless self-revolutionizing production, leaving the notional structure of revolutionary rupture in darkness.

     Lacan's notion of analysis as subversive of identifications, we are obtaining analysts who function as a kind of mental repair service, providing ersatz identifications

709. #709

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.379

     The Academic Rumspringa, or, the Parallax of Power and Resistance > Of Eggs, Omelets, and Bartleby's Smile

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Bartleby-gesture of pure withdrawal ("I would prefer not to") constitutes not a preparatory stage but the permanent ontological foundation of revolutionary politics—a parallax shift from the gap between two somethings to the gap between something and nothing, which simultaneously empties the superego supplement from the Law and reduces metaphysical difference to the immanent void within reality itself.

     a leader is necessary to trigger enthusiasm for a Cause, to bring about radical change in the subjective position of his followers, to 'transubstantiate' their identity

710. #710

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.248

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > The Unconscious Act of Freedom

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that Kantian/German Idealist Self-Consciousness (the empty point of pure reflectivity) is structurally identical to Lacan's subject of the Unconscious, and that this identity is confirmed by Kant-Schelling's notion of a primordial, atemporal act of choice: what phenomenal self-awareness experiences as imposed nature is in fact a radically unconscious free act, meaning Self-Consciousness itself is radically unconscious.

     for the features which constitute my 'self-image' (my imaginary and/or symbolic identifications), not for the emergence of the subject itself qua I.

711. #711

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.289

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > Toward the Theory of the Stalinist Musical

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that Stalinism and Nazism represent structurally distinct ideological formations: Stalinism, rooted in Enlightenment universalism, subjects subjects to a reflexive, self-monumentalizing logic (prisoners building monuments to themselves), while Nazism inscribes guilt into biological being, making annihilation the only "solution." The passage uses Nietzsche's racial-mixing formula and a beer-advertisement fantasy to show how overidentification with incompatible fantasmatic elements can traverse the fantasy that sustains ideological domination.

     finding yourself in a kind of empty space with nothing, no point of identification, to hold on to

712. #712

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.222

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > The False Opacity

     Theoretical move: Žižek uses Metzinger's neurophenomenological account of selfhood (the "cave," "red arrow," and "total flight simulator" metaphors) to sharpen the Lacanian distinction between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciated, arguing that Metzinger's two imprecisions—failing to distinguish those two subjects, and failing to distinguish generative opacity from the inherent symbolic opacity of phenomenal experience—are structurally linked: the second, properly symbolic opacity is the opacity of the subject of the enunciation itself.

     the Cartesian confusion is that the self-transparent thinking substance which directly experiences itself is generated by the illegitimate identification of the two I's

713. #713

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.261

     Copernicus, Darwin, Freud . . . and Many Others > interlude 2

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew mystifies constitutive social antagonism by displacing it onto an external limit, and that Milner's "Jewish exception" logic inadvertently reproduces this displacement; the properly Lacanian response is a "not-all" Europe in which everyone becomes an exception (objet petit a), dissolving the need for a constitutive Other — and he extends this critique to Jacques-Alain Miller's therapeutic-political proposal, which he reads as a socially conservative "compassionate cushion" that profits from the disarray of identifications rather than challenging the anonymous systems that produce it.

     Detraditionalization, loss of bearings, disarray of identifications, dehumanization of desire, violence in the community

714. #714

     The Parallax View · Slavoj Žižek · p.123

     The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies > Too Much Life!

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that shame, castration, and the "undead" lamella are not opposed but structurally co-produced: the noncastrated remainder (lamella/objet petit a) is not what escapes castration but precisely what castration generates as its own surplus, collapsing the distinction between lack and excess into a Möbius-strip parallax.

     one is ashamed of one's ethnic origins, of the specific 'torsion' of one's particular identity, of being caught in the coordinates of a life-world into which one was thrown

715. #715

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.206

     **Alain Resnais between the Present and the Past**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Resnais's *L'Année dernière à Marienbad* does not simply thematize the unknowability of the historical object but instead reconfigures our relationship to it: the impossible historical object exists in the present in a fantasmatic form, and its intrusion into the present (via radical cuts) is an extimate disruption that implicates the subject in the constitution of history itself, thereby opening onto an ethical response.

     Resnais's film invites us to grasp this disruption as the correlative of the subject within the filmic image and to identify with this disruption.

716. #716

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.191

     25

     Theoretical move: The cinema of intersection is theorized as politically transformative because it stages a direct encounter with the gaze as the impossible real, enabling subjects to identify with objet petit a, thereby shattering their dependence on the Other and opening the possibility of authentic political acts that exceed ideology's pre-given options.

     By facilitating an encounter with the gaze, the cinema of intersection encourages the spectator to identify with this object.

717. #717

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.241

     29 > **13. The Banality of Orson Welles**

     Theoretical move: This passage, comprising endnotes for chapters on Orson Welles and Claire Denis, theoretically elaborates the objet petit a as a constitutively lost and impossible object: Antonioni's nostalgic fantasy treats the object as once-accessible, Welles's films reveal the banality/emptiness at the origin (Rosebud, the sled), and Denis's cinematography stages the partiality of jouissance rather than its plenitude.

     an attempt to limit the film's disruptiveness, given that the film asks us to identify with George's desire

718. #718

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.198

     **The Overlapping Worlds of Andrei Tarkovsky**

     Theoretical move: Tarkovsky's "cinema of intersection" demonstrates that the worlds of desire and fantasy are structurally identical rather than alternative, thereby exposing the role of repetition in subjective existence and offering the subject the possibility of identifying with its objet petit a rather than endlessly pursuing a fantasmatic elsewhere.

     Tarkovsky's cinema confronts the subject with the inescapability of its object, and it offers the subject the possibility of identifying with this object.

719. #719

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.101

     12

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that freedom arises not from achieving the gaze or the Other's recognition, but from embracing the gaze's impossible status as objet petit a — the failure of the Other to see the subject properly is what sustains desire, and recognizing this impossibility liberates the subject from the Other's power.

     she wants him to identify the hidden kernel of her being—whether she will live or die.

720. #720

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.122

     15

     Theoretical move: Italian neorealism politicizes desire by refusing fantasmatic resolution—whether fascist or capitalist—thereby constituting the spectator as a desiring subject whose political engagement is grounded in the impossibility of a stable object, and Lacanian concepts of fantasy, desire, and the lost/impossible object are deployed to explain both the films' form and their ideological critique.

     it creates a series of protagonists... the spectator's desire cannot rest with one character.

721. #721

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.237

     29 > **9. Desire and Not Showing Enough**

     Theoretical move: This passage consists primarily of footnote apparatus for two chapters, deploying the desire/drive distinction as an organizing theoretical axis for a cinema-of-desire vs. cinema-of-fantasy framework, and citing key sources (Metz, Barthes, Brooks, Bazin, Kracauer) to position desire as intrinsic to cinematic narrative movement.

     because psychoanalytic film theory focused so exclusively on the problem of identification, there has been little attempt to think about the role of desire in the cinematic experience in a theoretical way

722. #722

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.18

     **Introduction: From the Imaginary Look to the Real Gaze** > **The Emergence of Lacanian Film Theory**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that early Lacanian film theory erred not by over-relying on psychoanalytic concepts but by deviating from them—specifically by reducing the Lacanian gaze to an imaginary function of spectatorial mastery derived from the mirror stage, while neglecting the symbolic and real orders; the proper response is a return to Lacan's own concepts, especially the Real gaze, as the basis for a genuine renewal of psychoanalytic film theory.

     classical Hollywood cinema allows the male spectator to identify with the gaze of the camera and the male protagonist, and female characters function solely as objects to be looked at.

723. #723

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.255

     29 > **25. The Politics of the Cinema of Intersection**

     Theoretical move: This passage (an endnotes section) makes several subsidiary theoretical moves: it critiques Butler's "resignifying" as ideologically captured agency that never challenges the underlying structure, aligns capitalist democracy with fundamentalism as sharing the same logic, and reads Tarkovsky's use of color/fantasy against Hegelian thinking-without-hope and conservative nostalgia.

     conceiving agency as the act of 'resignifying.' According to this idea, one has agency through performing one's (ideologically given) identity in a new way, with a new variation, thereby resignifying it.

724. #724

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.182

     23

     Theoretical move: The cinema of intersection, by juxtaposing desire and fantasy, stages the traumatic emergence and disappearance of the gaze as impossible object, thereby revealing to the subject that its own jouissance—not the Other's secret—fills the lack in the Other; this constitutes a cinematic analogue of the psychoanalytic cure that enables identification with the gaze rather than neurotic dependence on the Other.

     The key to the subject's freedom from dependence on the Other stems from its ability to embrace the gaze and identify itself with this impossible object.

725. #725

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.68

     6

     Theoretical move: Lee's cinema of fantasy operates politically by forcing the public avowal of excessive enjoyment hidden in racist and paranoid fantasies, thereby stripping that enjoyment of its ideological power — not through guilt but through the gaze's capacity to implicate the spectator in what they see.

     the spectator in the position of being led to enjoy the onscreen brutality, even as it is happening unjustly to a character—Richie (Adrien Brody)—that the spectator identifies with throughout the film.

726. #726

     The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan · Todd McGowan · p.171

     **Films That Separate**

     Theoretical move: The "cinema of integration" briefly exposes the ideological function of fantasy by formally separating the worlds of desire and fantasy, but ultimately sutures this division at the narrative's close, re-occluding the gaze; this movement points toward a hypothetical "cinema of intersection" that would sustain the separation and force a traumatic encounter with the gaze.

     By concluding with a return to the world of desire and coloring this world with fantasy, Wizard of Oz masks the ideological function of fantasy and works to produce spectator investment in fantasy.

727. #727

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.49

     **Name of the Father**

     Theoretical move: The passage performs two related theoretical moves: first, it defines the Name-of-the-Father as a signifier/metaphor that installs the symbolic order of desire and lack via the Oedipus complex; second, it grounds narcissism in Freud's drive theory, showing how drive vicissitudes (scopophilia, sadism/masochism) are structurally dependent on the narcissistic organization of the ego.

     the narcissistic subject is, through identification, replaced by another, extraneous ego

728. #728

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.36

     **Fantasy** > **Gaze**

     Theoretical move: The passage theorizes the Lacanian gaze not as subjective mastery over the visual field but as the objet petit a within that field—the point where the subject's unconscious desire distorts what is seen, implicating the subject in the very scene from which it imagines itself safely distant, and thereby exposing the unnatural, ideologically constituted character of apparent visual neutrality.

     before he/she identifies with the persons from diegetic reality, the viewer identifies with him- or herself as pure gaze–that is, with the abstract point which gazes upon the screen.

729. #729

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.46

     **Master/Slave Dialectic**

     Theoretical move: The passage traces the dialectical logic running from Hegel's Master/Slave through the concept of Mediation to Kant's transcendental idealism, arguing that identity, recognition, and knowledge are never immediate but always the result of a mediating process — a dynamic that Lacan imports into the Imaginary as constitutive aggressivity and alienation.

     each human being is in the being of the other

730. #730

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.27

     **Fantasy**

     Theoretical move: Fantasy is theorized not as wish-fulfillment but as the structural support of desire itself: it constitutes the subject as desiring by providing the coordinates of desire, answers the enigma of the Other's desire, bridges the subject to the impossible lost object, and functions as the necessary supplement to ideology by rendering social dissatisfaction bearable through imaginary enjoyment.

     When we love somebody, we don't accept him or her for what the person effectively is. We accept him or her insofar as this person fits the coordinates of our fantasy. We misidentify him or her.

731. #731

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.78

     **Substance**

     Theoretical move: The passage develops two interconnected theoretical moves: first, via Hegel, it establishes that substance is essentially subject through self-equality as thinking; second, and more extensively, it elaborates the paradoxical structure of the superego as simultaneously the law and its transgression, an obscene agency whose insatiable imperative is not prohibition but the command to enjoy (jouissance), drawing on Freud's two fathers (Oedipal and primal) to ground this contradiction.

     Identification with the primal father involves an ambiguous process whereby the subject simultaneously identifies with authority, the law and, at the same time, the illicit desires that would transgress and undermine the law.

732. #732

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.22

     **Demand** > **Drive** > **Ego**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Lacanian ego is not a seat of agency but a narcissistic construct built from the sedimentation of ideal images whose coherence is sustained by the Symbolic order, and that meaning is therefore Imaginary insofar as it is tied to this ego/self-image — a move that subordinates the ego to the priority of the Unconscious.

     arises as a crystallization or sedimentation of ideal images, tantamount to a fixed, reified object with which a child learns to identify, which a child learns to identify with him or herself.

733. #733

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.39

     **Fantasy** > **Imaginary Order**

     Theoretical move: The Imaginary Order is theorized as a pre-linguistic realm of ego-formation, mirror-identification, and illusory unity whose constitutive lack is ontological rather than developmental, and whose concealment of the Symbolic and Real makes its exposure a political as well as psychoanalytic task.

     In short, the imaginary is a realm of identification and mirror-reflection; a realm of distortion and illusion.

734. #734

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.38

     **Fantasy** > **Identity**

     Theoretical move: The passage develops a cluster of arguments around Identity, Ideology, and Identification: Identity is always externally determined and thus structurally unfree (Kant/McGowan); Ideology is not false consciousness but the social reality that conceals its own antagonistic kernel (Žižek/Lacan); and excess within narrative is internal to signification rather than external to it, making ideological subversion possible only from within the structure it exceeds.

     Identification...enables patients to express in their symptoms not only their own experiences but those of a large number of other people; it enables them, as it were, to suffer on behalf of a whole crowd of people

735. #735

     Theory Keywords · Various · p.44

     **Interpellation** > **Little Other**

     Theoretical move: The passage works through four related concepts—the little other as site of quasi-traumatic subjectivity-formation, the lost object as the structural condition of desire and enjoyment, phallic jouissance as the masculine structure of constitutive dissatisfaction, masochism as sadistic reversal, and the master signifier as the empty signifier that initiates the symbolic order and organizes enjoyment through exclusion—demonstrating that lack, loss, and emptiness are not failures of the system but its generative engine.

     they are enjoyed masochistically by the subject through his identification of himself with the suffering object.

736. #736

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · p.169

     Žižek Responds! > [The Subject Is Not Enough](#contents.xhtml_ch7) > Overidentification

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Laibach's strategy of "overidentification"—staging the obscene superego underside of ideology without ironic distance—is theoretically significant precisely because it exposes how ideology functions not through belief but through unconscious enjoyment, while also raising the limit-question of whether critical awareness of one's own disavowed authoritarian traits merely produces a more refined ironic stance rather than genuine ideological rupture.

     What if this critical reflection does not result in the abolition of false consciousness, but simply in a more refined, critical, ironic awareness of certain 'dark' tendencies… 'I am aware that even I share some of these authoritarian traits, but unlike the true idiots that don't question their allegiance to these traits, I am not fully identified by them!'

737. #737

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · p.196

     Žižek Responds! > [Hospitality, Hostility, and the “Real” Neighbor](#contents.xhtml_ch8)^{<a href="#8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_en8-1" id="8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_nr8-1">1</a>} > De-Racializing the Palestinians, or the Palestinians as Neighbors

     Theoretical move: The passage defends Žižek's concept of "Zionist anti-Semitism" against Chaouat's critique by arguing that it is Chaouat who performs an ideological splitting, and that Žižek's position is grounded not in anti-Semitism but in a universalist commitment to égaliberté — the claim that anti-Zionist Jews are themselves victimized by recycled anti-Semitic topoi.

     Žižek's sympathies clearly lie with Jews who object to Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, who question an aggressive Zionism that silences opposition at home and abroad

738. #738

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · p.171

     Žižek Responds! > [The Subject Is Not Enough](#contents.xhtml_ch7) > Irony

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that effective ideological critique (exemplified by Laibach's overidentification) requires an ironic, estranged subjectivity—not as a safe external standpoint but as an immanent undermining of a form of life—and that distinguishing productive estrangement from mere cynical distancing cannot be resolved theoretically in abstracto but only through concrete situational analysis; Žižek's reading of Zhuang Zi is used to show that critique opens a sense of the 'not-all' of one's condition rather than providing certified knowledge.

     Overidentification is precisely not (merely) identification. It is necessarily 'too much' in some sense and this too-much-ness makes possible certain questions and certain ways of relating to them.

739. #739

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.)

     Žižek Responds! > [The Subject Is Not Enough](#contents.xhtml_ch7)

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Lacanian subject occupies a paradoxical double role in ideology critique—simultaneously enabling genuine rupture and enabling ideological reproduction through ironic non-identification—and that this ambivalence demands a dimension of critical praxis (exemplified by Laibach and Žižek) that exceeds mere theoretical questioning.

     the subject is the Lacanian name for doubt, non-identity with imaginary identifications, and the rupture of old structures and routines

740. #740

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.)

     Žižek Responds! > [Response to Bjerre](#contents.xhtml_ch7a)

     Theoretical move: Žižek argues that every identity rests on an immanent exclusion, that over-identification (as practiced by Laibach) is more ideologically subversive than ironic distance, and that Laibach's genuine radicality lay not in riding the democratic wave but in prescient critique of democracy's own authoritarian underside—a dark message with no redemptive hope.

     identity politics is 'essentially the politics of wanting to remain captivated by the dream of your own identity'

741. #741

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.)

     Žižek Responds! > [Hospitality, Hostility, and the “Real” Neighbor](#contents.xhtml_ch8)^{<a href="#8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_en8-1" id="8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_nr8-1">1</a>} > De-Racializing the Palestinians, or the Palestinians as Neighbors

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Israeli refuseniks' refusal to treat Palestinians as racialized others constitutes a genuine ethical act that de-racializes Palestinians (transforming them from homines sacri into neighbors), exposes the lack in the Symbolic order of Zionism, and embodies a universalist "part of no-part" position that decompletes Zionist ideology—against both liberal humanist inclusion and nationalist organicism.

     if there is identification, we might say that the refuseniks identify with Zionism's symptom: the Palestinians as symptoms, the excluded 'part of no-part.'

742. #742

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.164

     [THIS IS IDENTITY POLITICS](#contents.xhtml_toc1_5) > <span id="chapter5.xhtml_pg_161" aria-label="161" role="doc-pagebreak"></span>**EVERY DAY A STRUGGLE**

     Theoretical move: Identity is not a pre-given substance but is constituted by the enemy it posits as a threat: the external menace is logically prior to and structurally necessary for the identity it appears to endanger, making identity politics inherently tied to reactionary logic and the friend/enemy distinction.

     our identification with the leader wavers. The vanquishing of the enemy is at the same time the undermining of the pillars of our own identity.

743. #743

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.17

     <a href="#contents.xhtml_toc2_2" id="introduction.xhtml_toc2-2"><span id="introduction.xhtml_pg_1" aria-label="1" role="doc-pagebreak"></span>INTRODUCTION</a> > **WORKERS OF THE WORLD**

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that emancipation requires abandoning investment in particular identity and embracing universality, drawing on Marx, Beauvoir, and Fanon to demonstrate that particular identity functions as an ideological trap that sustains capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism—while universality, as a constitutive absence rather than a possessable content, is inherently on the side of freedom and produces singularity through alienation from particularity.

     identification with one's particularity produces this sense of isolation. It is only when freedom becomes a struggle for universal freedom that it challenges the capitalist behemoth.

744. #744

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.112

     [UNIVERSAL VILLAINS](#contents.xhtml_toc1_3) > **THE SILENT TURN AWAY FROM STALIN**

     Theoretical move: McGowan argues that Stalinism's crimes stem not from an excess of universality but from a *misconception* of universality—the belief that total belonging is a realizable goal—and that the Left's silent retreat from universalism toward particularism after Stalin, rather than theorizing his error, is itself a theoretical and political catastrophe.

     He states, 'Deconstruction has never been Marxist, no more than it has ever been non-Marxist, although it has remained faithful to a certain spirit of Marxism.'

745. #745

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.120

     [CAPITALISM’S LACK AND ITS DISCONTENTS](#contents.xhtml_toc1_4) > **THE PERILS OF ISOLATION**

     Theoretical move: Capitalism's structuring principle—the commodity form—produces an empty particularity in subjects that identity politics (religious, ethnic, nationalist) compensates for without challenging; this double function of identity sustains capitalism by both misdirecting opposition and obscuring the commodity form as the true target of critique.

     capitalism works so well despite not giving individuals an explicit master with whom to passionately identify

746. #746

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.83

     [THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABSENT](#contents.xhtml_toc1_2) > **THE FRENCH INCLUSION**

     Theoretical move: Authentic universality is grounded in a shared, constitutive non-belonging that can never be fully realized; the French Revolution's Terror arose when this universality was betrayed by the drive toward total inclusion and universal belonging, which inevitably produces despotism and demands an enemy, thereby destroying universality itself.

     The danger did not lie in insisting on universal freedom but in transforming universal freedom into a form that promised complete belonging.

747. #747

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.180

     [THIS IS NOT IDENTITY POLITICS](#contents.xhtml_toc1_6) > **THE JORDAN RULES**

     Theoretical move: McGowan inverts the standard charge of "identity politics": what conservatives and liberals denounce as particularist identity politics is often covert universalism, while the critics' own appeals to unity and hierarchy are themselves the true form of particularist identity politics — establishing that the real political axis is universal vs. particular, not identity vs. non-identity.

     His magic trick is that he enables his listeners to enjoy their identity and believe themselves to be critics of identity politics at the same time.

748. #748

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.57

     [OUR PARTICULAR AGE](#contents.xhtml_toc1_1) > <span id="chapter1.xhtml_pg_54" aria-label="54" role="doc-pagebreak"></span>**THE LURE OF THE PARTICULAR**

     Theoretical move: McGowan argues that the left's epistemological retreat to particularism—most visible in Laclau and Butler—is politically self-defeating, because universality is not derived from the accumulation of particulars but is constitutive of particularity itself; only a universal that is prior to and lacking in each particular can ground emancipatory collective politics.

     Stuck in the existence of a group of particulars without recourse to the universal, the individual endures the violence of constantly recognizing itself in isolation.

749. #749

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.138

     [CAPITALISM’S LACK AND ITS DISCONTENTS](#contents.xhtml_toc1_4) > <span id="chapter4.xhtml_pg_137" aria-label="137" role="doc-pagebreak"></span>**THE EMPTY SUBJECT**

     Theoretical move: Capitalism's privileging of the general equivalent structurally empties out subject identity, reducing every particular to an interchangeable commodity form; this systemic annihilation of identity is not a contingent feature but the core logic of capitalism, which simultaneously liberates subjects from traditional mythic identity while rendering any chosen identity alien, contingent, and worthless.

     In a traditional society, my identity derives from my identification with the figure of mastery. I am a subject of the monarch or the territory.

750. #750

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan

     [THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABSENT](#contents.xhtml_toc1_2) > **WHAT IS NOT KNOWN**

     Theoretical move: McGowan argues that universality is grounded not in shared positive traits but in a shared constitutive lack—the unknown blank spot within every subject—and that this internal absence is both the basis of love and the source of genuine emancipatory connection, which is more terrifying than particularist identity because it demands avowing self-alienation.

     the subject's inability to fully identify with itself, through what remains unknown within every subject even for the subject itself.

751. #751

     Universality and Identity Politics · Todd McGowan · p.157

     [THIS IS IDENTITY POLITICS](#contents.xhtml_toc1_5) > **PLEASE RECOGNIZE ME**

     Theoretical move: Identity enjoyment is structurally dependent on ostracism — the exclusion of an other — making peaceful coexistence of particularist identities a structural impossibility rather than a merely practical difficulty, since identity without an excluded enemy cannot function as a site of enjoyment.

     shared humanity can never function as a point of identification unless we posit someone ostracized from it.

752. #752

     What Is Sex? · Alenka Zupančič · p.22

     It's Getting Strange in Here … > Christianity and Polymorphous Perversity

     Theoretical move: Zupančič inverts the standard account of religion vs. drive sexuality: Christianity does not repress partial drives but rather represses the *link* between enjoyment and sexuality, because what is truly threatening is not perverse jouissance but the ontological negativity of the sexual relation (the missing signifier), which registers in reality as the unconscious. Humanity is thus not an exception to Nature but the site where Nature's own lack of sexual knowledge acquires its singular epistemic—unconscious—form.

     incorporation oral drive—with which Christ's wife, the Church as it is called, contents itself very well

753. #753

     Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? · Mark Fisher

     Reflexive impotence, immobilization and liberal communism

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that both "immobilizer" resistance politics and liberal communism are captured within capitalist realism's horizon, and that breaking out requires inventing new political language and tactics adequate to post-Fordist control societies rather than either adapting or retreating to Fordist forms.

     What must be discovered is a way out of the motivation/demotivation binary, so that disidentification from the control program registers as something other than dejected apathy.