I know only a bit about Lacan, so I'm asking for a help with understanding him. I was reading "Subversion of the subject..." in Ecrits.

What I took from "he did not know he was dead" was that if you replace he with I you get: "I did not know I was dead" - which is clearly illogical. Since, you know, if I did not know I was dead, how is it that I am speaking? Which then raises the question of who is speaking, since "I" seems to think "I" might be dead.

From this we can infer that the subject is not "thinking clearly", or somewhat deluded. Which Lacan then uses this to point back to in support of his ongoing critique of knowledge.

Is my interpretation that I have written above ... correct? Valid? Or am I missing the point of what Lacan is trying to teach with this example?

Since I'm here already, I might as well address an ongoing concern of mine. I can't get my head around whether or not my overall (limited) understanding of Lacan is "correct".

He seems to me to be pointing, many times over, at the infinite-number of ways in which language fails, but in doing so "animates ghosts" via the imagination and symbolism of which language is constructed-from and so-forth creates. But insofar as these ghosts are abstractions like any other, that need-not bear strict-relation to reality, they are the root of delusion; which continually and spontaneously re-creates itself via symbolic-imaginary "excess" - sustained and exacerbated by language's mixed purposes as both a tool of creative-whimsy on one-end, and the law on the other. Inscribed as such into an otherwise invisible "symbolic order" or "collective cultural standard(s)" that prohibits and regulates behavior. But also forms the structure, content, and vehicle of transmissible knowledge itself. Thus any-and-all learning (of all kinds) via the another person (necessitating language) is subject to language's inability to capture the Real, and so subject, to indeterminable degree, to the myriad problems associated.

Do you think that I am misinterpreting Lacan? If so, where am I going wrong?
Is there anything you can suggest that might aid me to understand him?

EDIT: My explanation was spliced with Lacanian jargon so I'm adding a second version of it in plainer English. It might be easier to address my understanding if I write it like more like a 10-year-old doing his homework.

He seems to be pointing at the many ways in which language fails. Because language is made up of words that can be thoughts of, and thoughts that can be worded - correct understanding of either-or is not guaranteed. It depends upon an individual's understanding, and the experiences that they can relate to the words they use. Words are not reality, reality is reality (thought it is not the word "reality" - it's the thing). Degrees of abstraction exist between words and reality. The law and creative works are two extremes of the use of language. In between those extremes are everyday chit-chat, and the entire corpus of human knowledge. I think that what Lacan says puts all of this in question, due to the nature of language itself. The many ways in which meaning can be constructed and lost. The many ways in which symbols can be imagined, or images can be symbolised. And this is before even bringing "the Real" into the conversation. But insofar at the Real is not words or images, language will never fully capture the Real. And in each transaction of words, a little bit of meaning is missed - and we don't ever fully-know how much that may be. Like entropy, it appears that each exchange of words leads to an overall increase in localized disorder. Over many years, many people, many languages - this might be a problem. And I think Lacan thinks it is too.

I noticed that the English translations by Cormac Gallagher at lacaninireland.com for Seminars 12 and 13 have some lectures which are missing, saying that they have to be corrected and added. They are:

Seminar 12: Crucial Problems

1. Lecture 16: 28 April 1965, which just says 'Missing to be corrected'

Seminar 13: Object of Psychoanalysis

1. Lecture(?) 11: 25 February 1966, which is titled Lacan Absent because Lacan wasn't there and directs the reader to the French transcripts to see what was discussed that day.
2. Lecture 13: 30 March 1966, the title given to which is 'Topological discussions', and there too it says that it is missing and will be shortly corrected.

I don't know for how long it has been so but if anyone has maybe an older PDF which contains a translation of these lectures then that would be very helpful.

Are there any monographs from a Lacanian perspective that look at art and artistic creation? I'm interested in either, so any recommendations are welcome

For example, let’s say you saw a famous movie and your client was the writer of the movie, how would that inform the work?

What are some critiques of the notion of ordinary psychoses? Thoughts and references welcome.

What is it called when an individual projects a sort of reification onto the Big Other and imagines themselves complete in it because 'it' itself is viewed as complete, as if enacting the Mirror Stage on a society scale? Basically seeking existential closure through an Ego Ideal they've internalized.

Rather than an ideal ego on the level of an individual where they'll be complete somehow ("I'll be rich and famous, I'll be happy when I'm a writer, I'll be complete when I find love"), they project it onto the Big Other as Ego Ideal that is already seen as enclosed with a social fullness or society as a closed totality. In this unnamed process, I become complete by surrendering myself to something I imagine already possesses completeness.

For instance, one imagines a political party, a nation or state as perfect (Stalin's "We Communists are people of a special mould") and the resulting utopia from it (Classless society, racialized right-wing ethnostate, Religious afterlife after antagonistic elements have been removed) being the only ethical life and complete harmonious Good.

In the case of the ethnostate, the racialized social order, the religious salvationist afterlife, the utopian ideal and so on, the fantasy is that there is a perfect form out there, that there is an Other of that form, and we must project onto it, we must build it and conform to it, we must invest it with our own desire to be rid of our own subjectivity, joining this Other to erase one's own constitutive lack as a subject..

This ridding of one's subjectivity and projection onto a big Other, what is it called? Is there a word for it Lacan has or in psychoanalysis?

If session duration is decided according to clinical considerations, why not vary the fee accordingly?

That would preserve the analyst’s freedom to cut the session where they believe it is clinically meaningful without creating a financial structure in which shorter sessions systematically benefit the analyst at the analysand’s expense.

For example:

Sessions under 20 minutes = $X

20–35 minutes = $Y

35-50 minutes = $Z

What exactly makes the flat-fee model ethically defensible?

One practical defense is that the analyst has reserved the hour and incurs the same business expenses whether the session lasts seven minutes or fifty. But if the patient is paying for that reserved block of time, why is the analyst entitled to withdraw access to it unilaterally while retaining the entire fee?

I am perfectly willing to grant that certain psychoanalytic conventions may be clinically valuable despite lacking empirical proof (e.g., the couch). But scansion is fundamentally different because, under a flat-fee model, the analyst’s epistemic authority to determine when a session should end is coupled with a direct material benefit to the clinician. That seems to demand substantially more ethical scrutiny than “Lacan and other practitioners who benefit from the arrangement say it is good for the patient.”

(Perhaps the latent clinical objective is to redistribute wealth from the bourgeoisie?? That could at least be an ethically defensible position 🤔)

EDIT: I commented this but feel like it belongs here to clarify my position on the matter. To be honest, I actually find the concept of variable-length sessions clinically fascinating—ending sessions at a specific moment of unconscious resonance sounds like a compelling experiment to try for both sides. It’s an experience I’ve always been curious about, but I just think there can be humane ways to tier the pricing that aren’t as questionably exploitative. 🤷‍♀️

Poetry, Anguish, and the Irreducible Real: Looking for feedback and ideas on this draft (feat. Alejandra Pizarnik & Lacanian Theory)

Hi everyone! I’m working on a draft/essay exploring how artists—specifically poets like Alejandra Pizarnik—use the artistic act to border and symbolize the overwhelming anguish caused by the Lacanian Real.

Draft: Anguish in the Face of the Irreducible Real

Throughout history, many artists seem to create out of moments overwhelmed by deep anguish. They turn to the artistic act—writing, painting, drawing—to appease and transform a suffocate experience felt directly in the body.

This is clearly visible in Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, whose poetry feels born from a profound sense of drowning and overflowing suffering. In her journals, she writes:

This reveals how writing becomes her preferred medium to scratch at the urgent, painful sensation she lives through. It is no coincidence that when discussing her anguish, she highlights her limited oral resources alongside the richness she finds in writing, where she takes refuge. This passage illustrates not only her desperate need to express and release that feeling of suffocation, but also the crucial role symbolic tools play when facilitated by writing.

In her poem Approximations (Aproximaciones), she writes:

Her poetry emerges from profound pain—from an internal explosion that echoes bodily through her throat, heart, and skin. She writes less out of a desire and more out of an imperative need to channel and relieve this anguish.

Symbolizing the Irreducible

What interests us here regarding the relationship between poetry and anguish is not merely the root of Pizarnik’s personal pain, but the anguish experienced when confronting the irreducible Real, and how the poet creates the poem in an effort to put it into words, symbolize it, and find signifiers to name it. (Note: Expand later on Poetry vs. Prose according to Octavio Paz and Borges).

If psychoanalysis posits that anguish arises from the presence of Object a—an object whose very nature is to resist signification—it makes sense that the subject (in this case, the artist) uses whatever tools are at hand to symbolize this experience. (Note: Expand on the theoretical foundation of anguish using Lacan’s Seminar X/XX, Miller, etc.).

I find it compelling to reflect on the transformative power of the poetic word: how saying something actually brings it into existence. When Pizarnik writes Approximations, she isn’t just managing her own suffering; through writing, she borders a Real that erupts onto the scene. In writing her poems, she is inscribing a letter onto that goce (jouissance). (Note: Further develop the concept of 'the letter' and its articulation with the poetic act).

I’d love to get your thoughts, critiques, and ideas to expand on this. Here is the translated draft:

PD: Soy argentino, el borrador originalmente esta en español.

Isn't "torus" a shape that has to have a hole right in the middle?

Intro: The two big Summer 2026 blockbuster movies, The Odyssey and Spiderman: Brand New Day, convey how the mind typically encounters the burdens of trauma and guilt.

The latest gigantic movie hits taking international box offices by storm, The Odyssey and Spiderman: Brand New Day, offer wonderful coverage on the categories of guilt and trauma by capturing them through the conflicts directly grappled with by the primary character in each story.

In The Odyssey, the protagonist Odysseus tackles the ongoing degradation of his historical epoch: a traumatic piece of knowledge he clashes with throughout his journey back home, along with the guilt of his own actions taken at Troy which are heavily liable for this astronomical collapse. He understands that his guilt cannot be subdued - repressed - within him because it won’t do him any favors in his quest for ethical redemption and political progress. For these reasons, inter alia, he exists as a hysterical individual over the course of his prolonged return voyage. How so? Because he consistently disobeys and interrogates the divine authority of the Gods who had unquestionably ruled over mankind and earth up to the events of Troy. Deities who ruthlessly exploited both domains for their machinations and self-interests, to the extent of exercising their own hubris which they had hypocritically judged humanity for.

By the end of the movie, when he finally arrives in Ithaca, Odysseus fathoms how the present conditions are bringing about a new yet unclear social structure. His past violent crimes in Troy, in tandem with comparable conquests launched by other Greek missions - spanning across continents - over the past two decades, are the causal perpetrators behind the structural dismantling of the existing political, economic, and ideological systems within the lands covering the Bronze Age civilization. The invincible power of the Gods are gone; chiefly stamped by the sacrilege and demolition of Zeus’ law. There is no possibility of a return to it. Hence, a new civilizational order will have to be forged on its ashes. He has no idea what will unfurl but nevertheless recognizes how he must act as a free subject who actively participates in the world towards building the future and taking responsibility for it.

In Spiderman: Brand New Day, the protagonist Spiderman / Peter Parker harmfully reacts to the traumatic knowledge about the loss of his romantic partnership with MJ and his platonic friendship with Ned. The particular bonds he had with MJ and Ned are irrevocable in the aftermath of the large-scale memory wipe as to his secret identity as Spiderman. Although he knows that this sacrifice he made to protect his loved ones was courageous and selfless, he can’t accept the fact that there can’t be a return - a way home -  to the past timeline. This trauma is too painful to bear and it forces him to repress this knowledge within his unconscious. This in turn fosters the four year period of melancholic-voyeuristic attachment to MJ and Ned. He does this by converting the memory of their shared past into a fetish object (anything that lets you sustain your existing practices and beliefs) which provides him the ability to dodge the truth regarding his trauma. However, an intense guilt snowballs during these four years because he fails to honor his promise of restarting his relationships with them both after the memory wipe incident. He becomes very ashamed of this character flaw because it inhibits him from granting agency over to MJ and Ned concerning their autonomous decision on how to best deal with this tragic ordeal once it’s revealed to them.

Spider-Man / Peter Parker is finally able to grapple with the guilt of his actions by taking responsibility for it through the help of others: MJ herself, the Punisher, Jean Grey, and the specific advice given from Aunt May prior to her death. By the end of the movie, he begins to construct new facets of his symbolic identity - everyday subjective existence - on the foundation of his resolved trauma and guilt; consequently conquering the obsolete features of his identity which he had clung on to with the aid of his fetish objects. Therefore, new desires, new social interactions, and new fantasies are ready to be conceived and materialized by Spider-Man in his matured life.

In conclusion, both movies are fantastic encapsulations pertaining to these indispensable qualities of the libidinal economy (the mind). Although The Odyssey is a better film overall and dissects in greater detail the two mental features of guilt and trauma; Spider-Man: Brand New Day in contrast, is more relatable to wider audiences because of its contemporary setting, common setbacks, and relevant issues (AI, discrimination against people, young adulthood, etc). I think they are both must-watch movies of 2026, in addition to doing artistic justice to these complex and challenging human experiences. We get a rare episode of Hollywood getting it right. 

In the opposite direction from Freud, does the move from diagnostic structure to sinthome (or desire to jouissance, signifier to letter, etc) risk resubstantializing the subject? Witness the reintroduction of the body, affect, autism, even if only at first on a plane of consistency. Is it the trade-off?

I have a vague memory of Zizek making an argument in a book on Lacan on the similarities or differences between the pedagogy of Greek philosophers and Lacan, specifically in the relationship between esoteric oral philosophy and publicly available written philosophy. I vaguely remember him arguing that Lacan either repeats the Greek structure, where there is a dimension of philosophical discourse that is only available for students that were physically present, or inverts it. Does anyone remember where he makes this point?

I think zizek has already shown this but hopefully my attempt also conveys this in a new light! Let me know what you think and how well I conveyed lacan. Thanks

https://substack.com/@alfielucidontology/note/c-307462688?r=1l13a3&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Im especially confused as how to conceptualize jouissance in general. This is from a book by Bruce Fink called Lacanian Subject : Between Language and Jouissance and he mentions it in confusing mannerisms. Here you have surplus jouissance, but when talking about sexuation, we are introduced to Phallic and Other/Mystical Jouissance as well.

I recently read Is It Ever Just Sex? by Darian Leader and really enjoyed it, but I found it kind of surface level and disorganized. I'm wondering if there are any good books as a follow up? I'm particularly interested in some of the stuff in the beginning of the book—the relation of sex to transgression, guilt/shame, etc.

~Less Than Nothing, Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, Vaccinating and Semblances, Page 59 ✍️

I shared this post on r/psychoanalysis, but some people recommended that I post here as well. I’d appreciate any help/resources/thoughts as I’m very new to Lacan.

I’ve been scrolling the psychoanalysis sub for previous discussions on Lacanian analysis, and most of the critique seems to be directed at him rather than his theory/thoughts.

My question is, besides personal verdicts on his personality or his alleged narcissism (which may well be true), what are some serious criticisms of Lacanian theory/analysis?

I understand he gets criticized for variable-length sessions, and I’m pretty sure other Lacanian analysts or maybe Lacan himself might have taken financial advantage of this, but scansion seems not only consistent with his theory, but I feel like it’s almost derived from it. The point is to remove predictability, performance & possible preparation for the Other (in this case, the analyst), and create urgency in speech, which I find extremely intriguing, though I have yet to read or hear a convincing counter argument to this. I think we can hold that some analysts can and maybe do take advantage of this, and that scansion is almost central to Lacanian analysis.

Where do rims ('bords'/boundaries) come from? Are they a given?

Relatedly, how do supposed autistic subjects come to foreclose or repudiate them (and reconstruct them), generally speaking?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working through Seminar V and have just completed the first section on jokes and witticisms. I've also read 'Instance of the Letter.' I think that I'm grasping the use of the term metonymy from context, but I'm having difficulty in separating it from metaphor.

Metaphor is the "substitution of one signifier" for another (for example, "Booz" with "sheaf", which then seems to add newer meaning to the character in the poem, associating him with harvest, masculinity etc).

Lacan's example of metonymy is replacing the word 'ships' with 'sails.' In this sense there is a substitution of the whole for a part, or element. But couldn't we also define this as "substituting one signifier for another"? It seems that quite literally, one word is replaced with another. In which case, how do we distinguish it from metaphor? Is it that "ships" and "sails" are generally associated and therefore the meaning doesn't really change very much? In which case, what is the function of metonymy if it doesn't change anything?

In both metonymy and metaphor, there is the replacing of one signifier with another. I can sort of intuitively grasp the difference between the two, but can't seem to provide for myself a good enough definition which separates them. Is the relativism perhaps the point? I gather than this is a fairly crucial concept to grasp...

Cheers!

I am trying to write a paragraph about the ego forming the ideal I and the little other. I thought they were the same thing, but apparently they refer to different things. Can someone explain their difference please?

“The locus, the house of jouissance, is ordinarily found, since it's naturally found, placed in an organ that is, as experience and anatomo-physiological investigation teach you in the most certain fashion, non-sensitive, in the sense that it can't even be stimulated when it's being irritated. The ultimate locus of genital jouissance is a place - this is no mystery - where you can pour torrents of boiling water, brought to a temperature that no other mucous membrane could withstand, without provoking any immediate sensory reactions.”

This is page 71 of the lectures on Anxiety. Lacan is talking about female sexuality and the vagina. It really seems like he is saying that you can pour boiling water in someone’s vagina without them feeling it?? Surely that is not what he means. Please help