glossary of lacanian terms

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Glossary of Lacanian Terms

Stephen R. Friedlander

It has been said before: most readers experience some confusionin their first encounter with Lacan. Seemingly inconsistent,possibly even contradictory usages of words can be found

throughout his work. It was no different with Freud than it is nowwith Lacan—the vocabulary of pioneers of great stature goes throughmany transformations as their thinking evolves. Some of the con-fusion arises because Lacan uses “ordinary language,” but givesunconventional meanings to otherwise easily understandable words.This could suggest that a glossary would be quite helpful.

A brief philological digression sheds other light on the prospectof domesticating Lacan’s language for an English-speaking audi-ence. Consultation with the Oxford Universal Dictionary shows thatgloss and glossary have equivocal connotations themselves, to wit:

Gloss (v 1): To veil with glosses; to explain away; to read adifferent sense into.

Gloss (v 2): To veil in specious language; to render brightand glossy. . . .

Glossary (sb): A collection of glosses; a list with explanationsof abstruse, antiquated, dialectal, or technicalterms; a partial dictionary.

362 Glossary of Lacanian Terms

Although Lacanian language meets at least two of the OED’s con-ditions for a glossary, no strategy will succeed in eliminating mys-tery from Lacan’s terminology. Firstly, the ambiguity reflects thedialectical course of Lacan’s theory building. A greater difficultyreflects the degree to which Lacan’s thinking departs from thefundamental categories of Western culture, which are generallystructured in terms of polar opposites. For instance, philosophicaland scientific discourses are largely founded on, and continue torely upon, dichotomous conceptions such as true/false, inner/outer,imaginary/real, material/mental, literal/figurative, etc. Lacan di-rectly challenges the heretofore unchallenged hegemony of binarythinking, developing his own unique system of triadic categoriesreferred to as RSI (see below). The attempt to dispel confusionabout Lacan’s words by suggesting unequivocal meanings for indi-vidual terms thus veers uncomfortably close to the second definitionof gloss given above.

An old parable came to mind while I was pondering this di-lemma. A naïve man, contemplating conversion to Judaism, de-manded that Shammai and Hillel, two legendary rabbis, explainJudaism while “standing on one foot.” Affronted, perhaps, by suchan importunate request, Shammai beat him with a stick. Hillelsaid, “What you would not have done to you, do not do unto others.All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.” Were one to de-mand some concise but equally meaty summary of Lacanian theory,we might use one of Lacan’s own dicta, such as “The unconsciousis structured like a language” or, “The unconscious is the discourseof the Other.” Unfortunately, neither of Lacan’s epigrams are astransparent as Hillel’s.

Being less wise than either Shammai or Hillel, I agreed toprovide a glossary, but I hereby deny that that which you havebefore you is any sort of official lexicon. Rather than attempting tocompress complicated ideas into succinct formulas, and to smoothall difficulties away at the same time, I try to suggest some provi-sional alignment between familiar concepts and the exotic innova-tions created by Lacan for describing the human mind as it functionsin the midst of others created by Lacan. After reading this mate-rial, readers would be well advised to do as Hillel said, namely, to“go and study.”

Jouissance refers to a basic feature of primary process operations,that those experiences tinged with jouissance have a uniquely com-pelling motivational valence that makes them refractory to change.The language used to describe jouissance commonly implies that a

Glossary of Lacanian Terms 363

sense of enjoyment, a heightened degree of “pleasure” as it were,accompanies it, but this is potentially misleading. Wheneverjouissance is associated with experience, the subject of that expe-rience can—and generally does, in fact—deny finding pleasure init. Presenting problems typically cloak jouissance in a mask of painand helplessness. Self-image furnishes the accoutrements of (ratio-nalizations for) maintaining ways of life that preserve jouissance.The fundamental implication of jouissance is that some aspect ofpsychic life outside of and antecedent to socialization is in play.

Subject: Lacan uses this term strategically to differentiate whathe calls the subject from terms that are related in ordinary lan-guage: the self, the person, the ego, etc. Subject has a venerable,even esoteric history in philosophy, but its essence is simple andfamiliar: Given that a sentence expresses a complete thought, andthat every sentence has a subject and a predicate, “a subject” couldbe any agent associated with any verb: that is, whoever engages inthinking, feeling, or acting (in the past, present, or future); or (givena verb in the passive voice) anyone subject to being thought about,or to serving as object of another’s feeling, or to being acted uponby others. Freud’s unique contribution to this fundamental philo-sophical issue is the conception of “a subject,” which entails subjec-tive experience (meaning) without necessarily entailing consciousvolition or intention.

The subject (i.e., of psychoanalysis) does not exist ab initio. Theformation of the subject commences with the first transformationsof jouissance in infancy, and concludes with the subject’s “incorpo-ration of language” (q.v.). This process, by the way, coincides with“the incorporation [of the subject] into language” and an assump-tion of desire (q.v.). This explanation may seem quite unwieldy, butit has the virtue of focusing attention on the value of a rigorous,psychoanalytically specific conception of the subject. Lacan’s “sub-ject” will eventually be indicted as the hitherto anonymous “Other”who thought, felt, and acted in ways that the social/historical indi-vidual repudiates for him/herself.

Why is the subject not the same as the self, some readers mayask. Because the innocent (if not actually noble) being one has inmind at the moment of saying “ ‘I’. . . .” is little more than a decoy.It is the “good self image,” which “normal people” construct anddeploy to deflect attention from the true “subject.” The latter, whichexists by default, is properly called either “the subject of the uncon-scious” or “the subject of desire” (q.v.). Practically speaking, thissubject will only be discovered through psychoanalysis, and even


then, “discovered” only in the sense that it is synthesized throughiterative acts of identification, interpretation, and construction.

Lacan has another innovative use of the term subject: the sujetsupposé savoir (the subject [who is] supposed to know). This “sup-posed” subject is based on an image of a person who knows all theimportant information that the analysand needs to know—i.e.,someone who “knows” what the analysand wants, what kind ofsuccess or failure he will have in attaining it, what difficulties liealong the way, and how he may minimize suffering and sweepobstacles from his path. For Lacan, the essence of transference isnot the affect that arises in the analytic setting—signs of symbolicgratifications and losses at play in “the transference”—so much asit is the supposed prior knowledge attributed to the analyst.

Language requires many prior understandings (generally institu-tionalized as “correct” grammar and semantics, etc.). In the sensethat language-use always manifests a setting already shaped byactual and imagined interlocutors, Lacan indicates that languageis the medium of intersubjectivity and its very rubric. However, thelarger implications of this statement depend on coordinating theconcept of language with other technical concepts: the Law (q.v.),the symbolic (q.v.), and death (q.v.).

One may say that language controls its users (i.e., carries theforce of law with them) in the weak sense that whoever wouldspeak must work (to a large extent) within the scope of these agree-ments. However, language also controls users in a strong sense, inthat adults are obliged to seek and find satisfaction with/from oth-ers through symbolic means (i.e., language limits an individual’sactivity by capturing and confining it within “the symbolic order”of cultural demands and taboos). One of the earliest manifestationsof “language,” for example, is the word no, which comes, throughpersonal experience, to function as a substrate for a later develop-ment: one hears no and accommodates the imputed speaker’s de-mand, even though no actual individual vocalizes the word in theexternal world. The development of language is thus symbolicallytantamount to killing the “free spirit” who was formerly free toexpress his impulses directly and immediately.

The phallus: Lacan employed the term phallus for the specificpurpose of distinguishing a material object and biological organ(penis) from a pure abstraction and symbolic organ (the phallus).From its origin as representation of a thing one may or may nothave, the phallus is elaborated into a very complex concept: it


represents whatever one may retain or lose, may once have pos-sessed (and belatedly discover that it was somehow lost or removed).The phallus is a metaphor—the prime metaphor, in fact—that rep-resents, prior to an experience in psychoanalysis, the supposedbenefits or negative consequences of being, or at least appearing tobe complete (appearing to have the phallus) or appearing incom-plete (appearing to lack the phallus).

Psychoanalysis enables people to experience lack differently, sothat the phallus, merely by representing something that is (or willbe) absent, founds a symbolic order. In this order, the possibilitiesof absence and lack constitute an organized framework for theunconscious. The phallus “says” that no one, neither others nor“the Other,” is spared the experience of lacking. Thus, the phallusorients the subject’s primordial relationship to language (the objectto which his or her speaking is directed) and to others (the natureof his or her appeal to the Other).

By virtue of expectations associated with it, the phallus embod-ies the concept of value per se, a condition of “having it” thatpromises idyllic well-being and contentment. However, people whoimagine that they “have it” cannot sustain the project of imaginingthat they have it without the help of others who tend to imaginethat they do not have it. Those who imagine that they do not haveit themselves—often with reinforcement from those who want tobelieve that they themselves do have it—may try to get one of thelatter to allow them the use of “it” for their pleasure. (Readers arecautioned not to try to understand this while standing on one foot.)

RSI (Real-Symbolic-Imaginary): many readers new to Lacanstumble here because the technical meaning of these words quapsychoanalytic concepts is nearly the opposite of the meanings ofthese same words in everyday speech. Lacan’s real, for instance,does not refer to a consensually validated “reality,” nor does “imagi-nary” mean false rather than true. Neither, for that matter, does“symbolic” simply mean that some “this” stands for a certain “that.”

One cannot grasp the psychoanalytic real, imaginary, or sym-bolic as conceived by Lacan by taking these words one at a time.Readers should instead think of the great variety of meanings thatthe colors red, yellow, and green have in ordinary life and contrastthem with the definitive meanings the same colors have in thecontext of traffic control. There, each color means what it means—and means only that—because each is an element in an articulatedsystem of color signs. That is, each color “means” something in thecontext of a system of conjoint, differential interpretations—must


I stop or go?—for everyone who belongs to the community thatcontrives and sustains the symbol system. In the same spirit, onecan appreciate Lacan’s way of redefining the meaning of real, sym-bolic, and imaginary for psychoanalytic purposes. It is as follows:

The Imaginary includes all elements of personal experience thatare individually constructed as perception or meaning. Such ele-ments of perception and meaning appear self-evidently true unlessone takes them self-consciously as interpretations of a personal“reality” that is susceptible to reflection and criticism. Since indi-viduals are capable of validating any idea they want to believe, theImaginary encompasses everything that is potentially “true.” It iscomprised of images (in whatever sensory modality) for which allpoints in the perceptual field strictly correspond to a point in theimage—in other words, an identity between object and perceptsupposedly exists.

The Symbolic is, properly speaking, not an element of experiencebut a constraint on experience. The fact of being constrained (orhaving been constrained or of expecting to be constrained) is sus-ceptible to representation as a personal experience of being weak,inferior, or incomplete (dismembered). Infants live outside the sym-bolic order and are oblivious to it because they lack the cognitivemeans to integrate experience with a self-conscious idea of itselfhaving the experience. Neither can infants entertain the thoughtthat their own conception might be incorrect in the eyes of an-other—it’s “true” to them. There is only one set of eyes in infancyand in the imaginary. Ideas such as “you” (“me”) and “yes” (“no”)become established as frameworks of meaning for individuals onlyas they develop a capacity to apprehend objects in terms of a sys-tem of differences. Obviously, this happens only through language,where signifiers are sorted and combined according to the con-straints of the culture and the setting.

The Real is something one never gets hold of—the psychoana-lytic correlate of Kant’s thing-in-itself. Like philosophy’s Ding ansich, the real consists of phenomena that have an impact on expe-rience without being reducible to the universe of images and lan-guage. The real consists of whatever (“all” of the “whatever” andonly that but no more) remains beyond one’s capacity to representan experience of “things.” In other words, the Real affects people,despite the (mostly unconscious, ultimately futile) efforts peoplemake to wall themselves off from it.

Although psychoanalysts divide experience into discrete cat-egories theoretically, “experience” is never actually confined to anysingle component of the RSI consortium—the three components


are, as Lacan says, “knotted together.” Even in nonsymptomaticconditions, one never escapes from or transcends the imaginary. Nomatter how “well analyzed” one comes to be, the Imaginary perme-ates awareness. Therefore, no effort is made in psychoanalysis toeliminate any single component of RSI, nor to assist someone inarranging for one component of the psyche to “master” another.Analysts undertake to enable analysands (a) to use language inways that attest to their subjection to the Other (e.g., the Symbolicorder), (b) to recognize their inextinguishable exposure to the orderof the real, and c) to accept as true that they will never find arelationship that spares them from having to take up the burdensof “language.”

Desire arises from a sense (conscious or no) of lack. Normally,when psychoanalysts speak of desire, they conceive of it in termsof specific, identifiable objects or actions that fulfill a specific wishor realize a specific impulse. That is, the word desire is commonlythought of in the same way as wish and impulse. In contrast to thefamiliar usage, desire for Lacan is more an Ur-form of wish orinclination to action. Desire remains, even after every “needed”object has been attained and every wish-fulfilling experience tran-sited.

Desire is to wish and impulse as the Lacanian (i.e., the psycho-analytic) real is to “real” in the ordinary sense—desire is lack, inother words, and desire remains even in the midst of partial, tran-sitory satisfactions as an enduring sense of lack which drives psy-chological life. Speaking as Buddhist in outlook if not profession,Lacan claimed that all desire is ultimately a desire not to desire.Speaking from a Hegelian sensibility, Lacan identified “the desireto be recognized” as the fundamental desire. By explaining how theformation of individual desire results from experience with “lan-guage,” Lacan reinvents Oedipal theory as a process of synthesiz-ing desire, jouissance, subjectivity, language, RSI (especially, thesymbolic), and the object (a), the phallus.

Jouissance of the Other, J(O): Babies are enabled to develop byparents who “love” them and provide in a more or less adequateway for their survival and maturation. By the same token, parentshave fantasies about the baby—some expectations, that is, thatbeing the parent of a baby will be a source of pleasure in and ofitself, which is to say that parents expect something (which theynever put into exact words) from the baby. What this means, inLacanian terms, is that the baby is the object of unremitting


jouissance, a condition that is, from time to time, variously thrill-ing or mortifying for the baby, according to the contingencies ofwhat the parents expect without saying it in so many words.

Object a: Mental representations are, of course, constructions ofthe mind. The object a and the phallus have the unique characterof being constructions that no one recognizes as a construction,much less as their own construction. The phallus founds the pos-sibility of desire by representing/constituting an object that “theother” desires. The object a stands for the essence of the other’sotherness and an innate desirability associated with otherness. Theobject a is, in other words, one of a pair of psychic productions thatestablish as true what is certifiably untrue, the “fact” that thepsyche can have contact with an unmediated, potentially wish-fulfilling reality.

At the very same time that we emphasize the uniquely per-sonal quality of object a, in that each individual constructs anirreducibly idiosyncratic object a for himself, the object a derivesfrom, and constantly points back to, the intersubjective domain.This object embodies jouissance, as the following considerationsimply. Parents are presumed to fantasize that their baby is, or willbecome, an object that satisfies their desire—e.g., a desire to feelcomplete, to be recognized, etc.—and the baby registers the par-ents’ tacit wishes as overwhelmingly powerful demands. In the faceof these outside forces, babies (people) cannot avoid asking a ques-tion with which they grapple endlessly: “what must I be (for theother)?” The child’s response to this enigma is a “fantasy” (anunconscious theory) of what the parent wants (but never says in somany words). This fantasy, which the object a anchors in the mind,is not truly a childhood construction in the simple sense; the fan-tasy is unconsciously elaborated in later life and masked as amemory of what the baby thought/fantasized.

glossary of lacanian terms

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