Select Page

VECTORS OF NON-RELATION: LACAN’S SEMINAR XX ‘SCHEMA OF JOUISSANCE’

by | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025

Abstract: How might we read and apply Lacan’s under-utilized schema (or ‘graphicization’) from the eight session of Seminar XX? This paper draws on a series of reference-points in Freud’s work as a means of explaining both the three (R – I, I – S, and S – R) vectors in the schema and the three psychical objects (F, S(Ⱥ) and object a) that are produced at the midpoint of these vectors. Each such vector can be said to correspond to a particular type of challenge that occurs within the clinical work, such that what might be required is: 1) the Imaginarization of the Real, 2) the Symbolic reduction (or ‘signifierization’) of the Imaginary, and 3) the ‘Real-ization’ of the Symbolic (or, a missed encounter with the Real).

Related articles

  • THE RELATION OF CLAUSEWITZ TO PSYCHOANALYSIS

    The thesis that I would like to introduce in this text is that Clausewitz’s magnum opus On War is a text full of thoughts and observations that are of great value for psychoanalysis in theory and practice. In order to properly make use of them, it is necessary to do the work of making a mental translation of his thoughts to the object of individual and interpersonal mental life. The present text claims to offer, by setting a metaphorical relation…

  • Lacan and Girard: sex and non-violence

    This paper brings together the work of Jacques Lacan, the great Christianizer of psychoanalysis, and René Girard, the speculative anthropologist whose study of sacrifice and myth led not only to his rejection of Freud and Lacan but a dramatic conversion to Catholicism and growing conviction as to the revelatory power of the Gospels to expose the myth upon which psychoanalysis is built. Despite their antipathy I bring a psychoanalytic perspective to bear on Girard's theory, interrogating the modalities of sacrifice…

  • Hegel and Lacan: subject, substance and their impossible relation

    In this article, we are firstly going to reread Lacan's famous formula of the subject. This formula, “A signifier represents the subject for another signifier”, remains in some respects opaque to say the least. Lacan, however, will not cease to repeat it throughout his teaching. Secondly, we will read a passage in the Preface to the Phenomenology of the Spirit in which Hegel returns to the dialectic between subject and substance. In these readings, we will outline that defining the…