Lacanian psychoanalysis Lacanianism or Lacanian psychoanalysis is a theoretical system initiated by the work of Jacques Lacan from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is a theoretical approach that attempts to explain the mind, behaviour, and culture through a structuralism, str ...

, the Symbolic (or Symbolic Order of the

Borromean knot In mathematics, the Borromean rings are three simple closed curves in three-dimensional space that are topologically linked and cannot be separated from each other, but that break apart into two unknotted and unlinked loops when any one of the ...

) is the order in the unconscious that gives rise to

subjectivity The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is a basic idea of philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics. Various understandings of this distinction have evolved through the work of countless philosophers over centuries. One b ...

and bridges

intersubjectivity Intersubjectivity describes the shared understanding that emerges from interpersonal interactions. The term first appeared in social science in the 1970s and later incorporated into psychoanalytic theory by George E. Atwood and Robert Stolorow, ...

between two subjects; an example is

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...

's idea of desire as the desire of the Other, maintained by the Symbolic's subjectification of the Other into speech. In the later

psychoanalytic theory Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of the innate structure of the human soul and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a method of research and for treating of Mental disorder, mental disorders (psych ...

of Lacan, it is linked by the '' sinthome'' to the Imaginary and

the Real In continental philosophy, the Real refers to reality in its unmediated form. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is an "impossible" category because of its inconceivability and opposition to expression. In depth psychology The Real is the ...

Overview

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 In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex is a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter's attitude of desire ...

, and is determinant of

. 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 In economics, demand is the quantity of a goods, good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices during a given time. In economics "demand" for a commodity is not the same thing as "desire" for it. It refers to both the desi ...

and

need A need is a deficiency at a point of time and in a given context. Needs are distinguished from wants. In the case of a need, a deficiency causes a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. In other words, a need is something required for a ...

. However, when it becomes an empty signifier,

psychosis In psychopathology, psychosis is a condition in which a person is unable to distinguish, in their experience of life, between what is and is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or inco ...

, which

Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...

had failed to tackle in theory, develops from an unstable metonymic sliding of the

signified In semiotics, signified and signifier ( French: ''signifié'' and ''signifiant'') are the two main components of a sign, where ''signified'' is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of content", and ''signifier'' which is ...

(i.e.,

foreclosure Foreclosure is a legal process in which a lender attempts to recover the balance of a loan from a borrower who has Default (finance), stopped making payments to the lender by forcing the sale of the asset used as the Collateral (finance), coll ...

). "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. Lacan, Jacques. 1997. ''Écrits: A Selection''. London.

Quilting point

Lacan uses a French

double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacc ...

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. The name-of-the-father is a "binary signifier" while the phallus is a "unary signifier".

History

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." Therefore "the notion of the 'symbolic came to the forefront in the Rome Report 953��henceforth it is the symbolic, not the imaginary, that is seen to be the determining order of the subject." Sheridan, Alan. 1994. "Translator' Note" in J. Lacan. 1994. ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis''. London. Lacan's concept of the symbolic "owes much to a key event in the rise of structuralism…the publication of

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...

'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. Therefore, "Man speaks…but it is because the symbol has made him man" which "superimposes the kingdom of culture on that of a nature."Accepting that "language is the basic social institution in the sense that all others presuppose language," Lacan found in

Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...

'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.'"

Predominance of the idea

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." 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," Lacan made the leap to seeing "the

—in so far as we continue to recognise it as covering the whole field of our experience with its signification"—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 The name of the father ( French ') 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. Lacan plays with the similar sounds in French of ' (the name of ...

'' 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." 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 Melanie Klein (; ; Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Kl ...

describes the relation to the mother as a mirrored relationship �� eglectingthe third term, the father"—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

hich Ij () is a village in Golabar Rural District of the Central District in Ijrud County, Zanjan province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq ...

��are public, communal property." 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 symbolic dimension of language is that of the

signifier In semiotics, signified and signifier (French language, French: ''signifié'' and ''signifiant'') are the two main components of a Sign (semiotics), sign, where ''signified'' is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of con ...

, in which elements have no positive existence but are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences.

Changes in the idea's meaning

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." By the turn of the decade (1968–71), "Lacan gradually came to dismiss the

Oedipus Oedipus (, ; "swollen foot") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family. ...

��as 'Freud's dream'", 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." 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," Chiesa, Lorenzo. 2007. ''Subjectivity and Otherness''. London. p. 188. 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."

Notable figures

Notes

External links

Chronology of Jacques Lacan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Symbolic, The Psychoanalytic terminology Jacques Lacan Post-structuralism Structuralism Philosophy of sexuality