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The Symbolic (or Symbolic Order of the Borromean knot) [1] is the order in the unconscious that gives rise to subjectivity and bridges intersubjectivity between two subjects[ citation needed ]; an example is Jacques Lacan's idea of desire as the desire of the Other, maintained by the Symbolic's subjectification of the Other into speech. [2] In the later psychoanalytic theory of Lacan, it is linked by the sinthome to the Imaginary and the Real.
'It is in the dimension of a synchrony that you must situate the unconscious' (SXI: 26). [3]
— Lacan
In Lacan's theory, the unconscious is the discourse of the Other and thus belongs to the Symbolic. It is also the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the Oedipus complex, and is determinant of subjectivity. [4] A formative moment in the development of the Symbolic in a subject is the Other giving rise to the objet petit (a)utre, establishing lack, demand and need. However, when it becomes an empty signifier, psychosis, which Freud had failed to tackle in theory, develops from an unstable metonymic sliding of the signified (i.e., foreclosure). "The signifier", which in Lacan's theory is above the signified as opposed to Saussure's unity of signifier and signified, "is that which represents a subject for another signifier."
Early on, Lacan considered his attempt "to distinguish between those elementary registers whose grounding I later put forward in these terms: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real" to be "a distinction never previously made in psychoanalysis", because Freud had not encountered semiotic ideas, but had encountered phenomena in case studies that warranted a semiotic understanding. [5] : 95
Lacan uses a French double entendre of nom (name) vs. non (no-no) to contextualize Freudian incest prohibition into a figurative, linguistic framework; the name-of-the-father (no-of-the-father) signifier quilts the lattice of signifiers with a "paternal metaphor", a master signifier that "double stitches" the meaning of the Symbolic Order over the Imaginary Order by establishing the Law, a prohibition of imaginary demand by supplanting symbolic desire. [6]
The name-of-the-father is a "binary signifier" while the phallus is a "unary signifier". [7]
Lacan's term for such elected transcendental constants is the 'point de capiton,' which Žižek describes as the ultimately fake 'quasi-transcendental master signifier that guarantees the consistency of the big Other.' [8]
— Andrea Hurst
Lacan's early work was centred on an exploration of the Imaginary, of those "specific images, which we refer to by the ancient term of imago.…it set out from their formative function in the subject." [5] : 11 Therefore "the notion of the 'symbolic came to the forefront in the Rome Report [1953]…henceforth it is the symbolic, not the imaginary, that is seen to be the determining order of the subject." [9] : 279
Lacan's concept of the symbolic "owes much to a key event in the rise of structuralism…the publication of Claude Lévi-Strauss's Elementary Structures of Kinship in 1949.… In many ways, the symbolic is for Lacan an equivalent to Lévi-Strauss's order of culture:" a language-mediated order of culture. [10] : xxii, xxv Therefore, "Man speaks…but it is because the symbol has made him man" which "superimposes the kingdom of culture on that of a nature." [5] : 65–6 Accepting that "language is the basic social institution in the sense that all others presuppose language," [11] Lacan found in Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic division of the verbal sign between signifier and signified a new key to the Freudian understanding that "his therapeutic method was 'a talking cure.'" [12]
For a decade or so after the Rome Report, Lacan found in the concept of the Symbolic an answer to the neurotic problematic of the Imaginary: "It is the task of symbolism to forbid imaginary capture […] supremacy of the symbolic over the imaginary […] supremacy of the symbolic over the real." [13] Accepting through Lévi-Strauss the anthropological premise that "man is indeed an 'animal symbolicum'", and that "the self-illumination of society through symbols is an essential part of social reality," [14] Lacan made the leap to seeing "the Oedipus complex—in so far as we continue to recognise it as covering the whole field of our experience with its signification" [5] : 66 —as the point whereby the weight of social reality was mediated to the developing child by the (symbolic) father: "It is in the name of the Father that we must recognize the support of the symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of the law." [5] : 67
The imaginary now came to be seen increasingly as belonging to the earlier, closed realm of the dual relationship of mother and child—"Melanie Klein describes the relation to the mother as a mirrored relationship […] [neglecting] the third term, the father" [15] —to be broken up and opened to the wider symbolic order.
Lacan's shorthand for that wider world was the Other—"the big other, that is, the other of language, the Names-of-the-Father, signifiers or words [which] […] are public, communal property." [16] But though it is an essentially linguistic dimension, Lacan does not simply equate the symbolic with language, since the latter is involved also in the Imaginary and the Real. The symbolic dimension of language is that of the signifier, in which elements have no positive existence but are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences.
With the increasing use of Lacanian theory in psychoanalysis in the Sixties, the Symbolic was seen more as an inseparable quality of the human condition, rather than as a register for a therapeutic cure-all. Lacan's critical attention began to shift instead to the concept of the Real, seen as "that over which the symbolic stumbles […] that which is lacking in the symbolic order, the ineliminable residue of all articulation […] the umbilical cord of the symbolic." [9] : 280
By the turn of the decade (1968–71), "Lacan gradually came to dismiss the Oedipus […] as 'Freud's dream'", [17] despite his own earlier warning of the dangers if "one wishes to ignore the symbolic articulation that Freud discovered at the same time as the unconscious…his methodical reference to the Oedipus complex." [5] : 191
Whether his development of the concept of jouissance , or "the 'identification with the sinthome' (as the naming of one's Real) advocated in Lacan's last works as the aim of psychoanalysis," [18] will in time prove as fruitful as that of the symbolic order perhaps remains to be seen. Part of Lacan's enduring legacy will surely however remain bound up with the triumphal exploration of the symbolic order that was the Rome Report: "Symbols in fact envelop the life of man in a network so total that they join together […] the shape of his destiny." [5] : 68
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)Lacan describes the name-of-the-father by means of an analogy from the realm of fabrics: le point de capiton, the upholstery button or quilting point. This sews the subject into the symbolic order and thus redoubles him as both an imaginary individual and a subject of legal responsibility and social expectation: 'the notion of father [...] gives [Freud] the most palpable element in experience of what I've called the quilting point [point de capiton] between the signifier and the signified' (SII: 268).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. Transcriptions of his seminars, given between 1954 and 1976, were also published. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself.
Psychoanalysis is a theory developed by Sigmund Freud. It describes the human soul as an apparatus that emerged along the path of evolution and consists mainly of three parts that complement each other in a similar way to the organelles: a set of innate needs, a consciousness that serves to satisfy them, and a memory for the retrievable storage of experiences during made. Further in, it includes insights into the effects of traumatic education and a technique for bringing repressed content back into the realm of consciousness, in particular the diagnostic interpretation of dreams. Overall, psychoanalysis represents a method for the treatment of mental disorders.
Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism or literary theory that, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.
In the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire, the "a" being the small other ("autre"), a projection or reflection of the ego made to symbolise otherness, like a specular image, as opposed to the big Other which represents otherness itself. It is sometimes called the object cause of desire, as it is the force that induces desire towards any particular object. Lacan always insisted that the term should remain untranslated, "thus acquiring the status of an algebraic sign" (Écrits).
Phallocentrism is the ideology that the phallus, or male sexual organ, is the central element in the organization of the social world. Phallocentrism has been analyzed in literary criticism, psychoanalysis and psychology, linguistics, medicine and health care, and philosophy.
In continental philosophy, the Real refers to the demarcation of reality that is correlated with subjectivity and intentionality. In Lacanianism, it is an "impossible" category because of its opposition to expression and inconceivability. The Real Order is a topological ring (lalangue) and ex-sists as an infinite homonym.
[T]he real in itself is meaningless: it has no truth for human existence. In Lacan's terms, it is speech that "introduces the dimension of truth into the real."
The Imaginary is one of three terms in the psychoanalytic perspective of Jacques Lacan, along with the Symbolic and the Real. Each of the three terms emerged gradually over time, undergoing an evolution in Lacan's own development of thought. "Of these three terms, the 'imaginary' was the first to appear, well before the Rome Report of 1953…[when the] notion of the 'symbolic' came to the forefront." Indeed, looking back at his intellectual development from the vantage point of the 1970s, Lacan epitomised it as follows:
"I began with the Imaginary, I then had to chew on the story of the Symbolic ... and I finished by putting out for you this famous Real."
Four discourses is a concept developed by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He argued that there were four fundamental types of discourse. He defined four discourses, which he called Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, and suggested that these relate dynamically to one another.
Sinthome is a concept introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar Le sinthome (1975–76). It redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of the role of the subject outside of analysis, where enjoyment is made possible through creative identification with the symptom.
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is the 1978 English-language translation of a seminar held by Jacques Lacan. The original was published in Paris by Le Seuil in 1973. The Seminar was held at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris between January and June 1964 and is the eleventh in the series of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. The text was published by Jacques-Alain Miller.
"The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud" is an essay by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, originally delivered as a talk on May 9, 1957 and later published in Lacan's 1966 book Écrits.
Feminists have long struggled with Sigmund Freud's classical model of gender and identity development, which centers on the Oedipus complex. Freud's model, which became integral to orthodox psychoanalysis, suggests that because women lack the visible genitals of the male, they feel they are "missing" the most central characteristic necessary for gaining narcissistic value—therefore developing feelings of gender inequality and penis envy. In his late theory on the feminine, Freud recognized the early and long lasting libidinal attachment of the daughter to the mother during the pre-oedipal stages. Feminist psychoanalysts have confronted these ideas and reached different conclusions. Some generally agree with Freud's major outlines, modifying it through observations of the pre-Oedipal phase. Others reformulate Freud's theories more completely.
In Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic philosophy, lack is a concept that is always related to desire. In his seminar Le transfert (1960–61) he states that lack is what causes desire to arise.
In psychoanalysis, foreclosure is a specific psychical cause for psychosis, according to French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Penis envy is a stage in Sigmund Freud's theory of female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a defining moment in a series of transitions toward a mature female sexuality. In Freudian theory, the penis envy stage begins the transition from attachment to the mother to competition with the mother for the attention and affection of the father. The young boy's realization that women do not have a penis is thought to result in castration anxiety.
A phallus is a penis, an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history, a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic.
The name of the father is a concept that Jacques Lacan developed from his seminar The Psychoses (1955–1956) to cover the role of the father in the Symbolic Order.
The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis is the 1988 English-language translation of published in Paris by Le Seuil in 1977. The text of the Seminar, which was held by Jacques Lacan at the Hospital of Sainte-Anne in Paris between the Fall of 1954 and the Spring of 1955 and is the second one in the series, was established by Jacques-Alain Miller and translated by Sylvana Tomaselli.
Lacanianism or Lacanian psychoanalysis is a theoretical system that explains the mind, behaviour, and culture through a structuralist and post-structuralist extension of classical psychoanalysis, initiated by the work of Jacques Lacan from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lacanian perspectives contend that the human mind is structured by the world of language, known as the Symbolic. They stress the importance of desire, which is conceived of as perpetual and impossible to satisfy. Contemporary Lacanianism is characterised by a broad range of thought and extensive debate among Lacanians.