With acknowledgements to Introducing Lacan, written by Darian Leader and illustrated by Judy Groves (Cambridge, UK: Icon Books, 2005).
the subject--the split subject, the divided subject. The subject is a positioning in relation to the Other, a stance adopted with respect to the Other's desire. Whereas the ego is imaginary, the subject is linked to the symbolic. It is divided by the rules of language to which it is subordinate, and split insofar as it does not know what it wants. The divided subject emerges in moments of bungled actions and slips of the tongue. Prior to his symbolic externalization, the subject cannot be said to be 'inexpressible,' since the medium of expression itself is not yet given.
the subject of the enunciation--the one doing the enunciating.
the subject of the enunciated--the subject of the content.
death drive--the subject before subjectivization. Death drive is something like autonomy, or the negativity that is the abyss of freedom.
the Father--the Oedipal function of the Father is as a symbolic function, less a person than a place, which is responsible for separation from the mother. The paternal operation (the Name or 'No!' of the Father) destroys the child's game of trying to be the phallus for the mother. A father becomes Father 'as such,' the bearer of symbolic authority, only insofar as he assumes his 'castration,' the difference between himself in the immediate reality of his being and the place in the symbolic structure which guarantees his symbolic authority: the Father's authority is radically 'decentred' with regard to father as flesh-and-blood person; it is the anonymous symbolic law which speaks through him.
the Name of the Father--this is the symbolic operation that separates mother from child. By her speech the mother situates a reference to something she desires that is beyond the capacity of the child to realize. Castration is the symbolic dimension of the Name of the Father that leads the child to renounce the attempt to be the phallus for the mother.
castration complex--the renunciation of the sustained attempt to be the phallus for the mother. Neurotics are people who have not committed themselves to this renunciation. The child tries to be the phallus for the mother. A boy's use of the penis must involve the acceptance of the fact that there is a symbolic phallus always beyond him. A boy can accept having the phallus insofar as he accepts that having is based on a prior not-having. A girl can accept not having the phallus only insofar as the original phallic identification with her mother is renounced. "Symbolic castration" is the gap between my role in the Symbolic register and the Real, contingent me. Symbolic castration involves the loss of jouissance (pleasure-in-pain) that comes with our entry into language and the symbolic order. Symbolic castration is another name for that which separates us from the Real.
desire--desire is barred from consciousness, unlike a want or a wish. Desire is the process of distortion which turns a wish into some particular image or detail. There is no desire without language. Desire consists of linguistic mechanisms that twist and distort certain elements into others. Desire is a force at work between signifiers. Desire is the essence of the human subject. Desire is the Other's desire. The desire of the Other is a burning question for the child. When the child confronts the enigmatic desire of the Other, it feels unbearable anxiety, since it does not know what the Other wants. Even if the paternal metaphor provides an answer to the burning question with the signification of the phallus, the child must still face the question of its own existence: 'What am I for the Other?' There is a progression from need to demand and then to desire. When the motherer cannot meet the child's impossible demands, the child's dependence on the mother can be overcome. The child must realize that it has desire that does not depend on the mother. When the mother cannot satisfy all of the child's impossible demands, the child is able to begin identifying its own desire. The child's frustrated demands give birth to the child's desire. In this sense, desire is the overcoming of demand.
need--need is primarily physiological, such as the need for food or for shelter. Need can be temporarily eliminated. When it comes to needs, people are similar to animals that do not speak. A newborn infant is in a state of need. Because compared to other animals humans are born biologically premature, they would die without a motherer who tends to their needs.
demand--demand is unsatisfiable. Ultimately it is the demand for love. It is a continuing spiral. Whereas desire is related to specific conditions (as in a fetish), demand is unconditional. The child demands love from its mother. Demands the parents make upon the child include things like 'Eat!' and 'Shit!' After the initial phase of need in infancy, there is a progression from need to demand to desire. A child who demands particular things from its mother will soon afterward demand something else. The child is demanding an object that does not really exist, since he is demanding something that finally will not be given. The child demands until it learns that the mother cannot meet all of its demands. The child demands the impossible (proof of love) in order to separate from the mother. The barred subject in relation to the demands of the parents constitutes the drive. Drives are partial and are tied to specific parts of the body's surface. The drive is not biological like need. The drive is generated by the demands the parents make upon the child ('Eat!', 'Shit!').
the phallus--the object of the mother's desire. That beyond the child towards which the mother's desire is directed. The child tries to be the phallus for the mother. The phallus signifies desire and what we do not have, what is lacking. The phallus is the way the unconscious represents loss. The phallus is the penis plus the idea of lack or absence. It is what one searches for in the mother. The phallus is never 'there' in anyone's experience. The phallus is like a screen or a veil.
the big Other--the Lacanian big Other is the intersubjective, symbolic network which desires for us, and on whose behalf we desire. The big Other is the set of linguistic elements and their otherness.
fantasy--the imaginary scenario that, by means of its fascinating presence, curtains the lack in the big Other. The fantasy hides the inconsistency of the symbolic order; fantasy masks the fundamental impossibility implied in the very act of symbolization. Fantasy conceals the impossibility of the sexual relationship. Fantasy is the ultimate support of our 'sense of reality.' Fantasy constitutes our desire; fantasy teaches us how to desire.
speech--speech is an act, involving subject and other.
language--language is a structure, a formal system of differences.
repression--repression involves overlooking the Real of our desire. Repression occurs when we believe too much in the social 'reality,' the fragile symbolic web that protects us from the unconscious, from the Real of our desire.
jouissance--anything which is too much for the organism to bear. Jouissance is not 'enjoyment' in the sense of please; it is felt most of the time as suffering. What we experience as suffering is experienced by the unconscious drives as satisfaction. Jouissance is Real; it is outside of symbolization and meaning.
neurotic--neurotics have not accepted symbolic castration. They have not renounced the attempt to be the phallus for the mother. The neurotic wants to be the phallus for the mother. The neurotic privileges demand and hides his desire beneath the imposing presence of demand.
psychosis--in psychosis, the Name of the Father is not repressed, but obliterated. When an element is merely repressed, it returns in one's speech, in the signifying chain, in the symbolic. But when an element is foreclosed, it can't return in the symbolic, because it never existed there; it was rejected or banished. Hence it returns in the Real, e.g., in hallucinations. A psychotic delusion tries to supply the missing signification in the place of the hole opened up by the absence of the Name of the Father. A psychotic delusion gives sense to a menacing, meaningless world. The delusional signification replaces the standard Oedipal one.
superego--superego designates the intrusion of enjoyment (jouissance, not pleasure) into the field of ideology. Superego is the revenge that capitalizes on our guilt--the price we pay for betwraying our desire in the name of the Good. Superego is the necessary inverse or underside of the Ego-Ideal, of the ethical norms founded upon the Good of the community.
symptom--something in mind or body which intrudes into your life to bring you misery. The symptom represents a portion of jouissance which has not been dislodged, and which has come back to disrupt your existence.
ego--the ego is an other. The ego is the site of imaginary identifications. This is not the same as the 'I' of speech. The ego is the place from which we speak.
Ideal-Ego--the image I assume, the other I identify with, the imaginary other.
Ego-Ideal--the Other as desire. The point from which you are looked at. It involves the symbolic register. The Ego-Ideal is the one I think is watching me; the symbolic point which gives me a place (e.g., God).
masculine subject position (masculine sexuation)--universality and its constitutive exception.
feminine subject position (feminine sexuation)--no exception to the set, which renders the set non-all.
sinthome--the element which can serve to bind the three orders of Real, symbolic, and imaginary. The word play in French on 'sinthome' involves references to symptom, Saint, and Saint Thomas.
S1--the master signifier: a signifier with no signified content. A master signifier presents itself as a dead end, a stopping point, a term, word, or phrase that puts an end to discussion. The master signifier is the One, the signifier for which all the others represent the subject.
the four discourses--the Master's discourse, the University discourse, the Analyst's discourse, and the Hysteric's discourse.
the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis--the unconscious, repetition, the drive, and transference.
the Real--the Real is not a circulating object in the symbolic register. Instead the Real is a remainder, a left-over scrap of the whole operation of entering the symbolic. The Real is that which isn't symbolized, which is excluded from both the imaginary register and the symbolic register. The Real is what is not present in a positive way in 'reality.' The Real is irreducible antagonism, trauma, or paradox.
the graph of desire--from Lacan's 1960 text 'Subversion of the Subject and Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious,' which is maybe the most important text in Lacan's Ecrits.
object a, objet a, objet petit a--the surplus, that elusive make-believe that drives us to change our existence. The cause of desire. An empty form filled out by everyone's desire. The objet petit a is the object that has come into being by being lost. It only operates its fascination on individuals who bear a partial perspective on it. The objet petit a is the object-cause of desire. The object a is a quite ordinary, everyday object that, as soon as it is 'elevated to the status of the Thing,' starts to function as a kind of screen, an empty space on which the subject projects the fantasies that support his desire; it is a surplus of the Real that propels us to narrate again and again our first traumatic encounters with jouissance.
anxiety--the price we pay for the absence of shame. Anxiety occurs not when the object-cause of desire is lacking; it is not the lack of the object that gives rise to anxiety, but, on the contrary, the danger of our getting too close to the object and thus losing the lack itself. Anxiety is brought on by the disappearance of desire.
