Symbolic Knot
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#01
Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English · Jacques Lacan · p.626
In Memory of Ernest Jones: On His Theory of Symbolism > On an Ex Post Facto Syllabary
Theoretical move: Lacan argues that symbolism is irreducible to biological, developmental, or functional explanations because the symbolic knot — the division the signifier engenders in the subject — cannot be flattened out; psychoanalysis is privileged precisely because it isolates this knot as the truth-effect that is the counterpart of all knowledge.
The knot of the functional phenomenon is merely a false knot according to this criterion, and this is why Jones pretends that it redoubles the first knot. But flattening out the second one does not make the first one easier to deal with.