Editing Jacques Lacan (section)

===Other===
While [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] uses the term "other", referring to ''der Andere'' (the other person) and ''das Andere'' (otherness), Lacan (influenced by the seminar of [[Alexandre Kojève]]) theorizes [[alterity]] in a manner more closely resembling [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel's]] philosophy.

Lacan often used an [[Matheme|algebraic symbology]] for his concepts: the big other (''l'Autre'') is designated ''A'', and the little other (''l'autre'') is designated ''a''.<ref name="seminar_II">Lacan, J., ''The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), {{ISBN|978-0-393-30709-2}}</ref> He asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: "the analyst must be imbued with the difference between ''A'' and ''a'', so he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not the other".<ref name="dylan_evans" />{{rp|135}} Dylan Evans explains that:

* The little other is the other who is not really other, but a reflection and projection of the ego. Evans adds that for this reason the symbol ''a'' can represent both the little other and the ego in the schema L.<ref>Schema L in ''The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis''.</ref> It is simultaneously the counterpart and the specular image. The little other is thus entirely inscribed in the imaginary order.
* The big other designates radical alterity, an other-ness which transcends the illusory otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan equates this radical alterity with language and the law, and hence the big other is inscribed in the order of the symbolic. Indeed, the big other ''is'' the symbolic insofar as it is particularized for each subject. The other is thus both another subject, in its radical alterity and unassimilable uniqueness, and also the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject."<ref>Dylan Evans, ''An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis'' (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 133; translation modified<!--but how much of this is translation?-->.</ref>

For Lacan "the Other must first of all be considered a locus in which speech is constituted," so that the other as another subject is secondary to the other as symbolic order.<ref>Lacan, J., "The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955–1956," translated by Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997)</ref> We can speak of the other ''as a subject'' in a secondary sense only when a subject occupies this position and thereby embodies the other for another subject.<ref>Lacan, J., ''Le séminaire. Livre VIII: Le transfert, 1960–1961.'' ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1994).</ref>

In arguing that speech originates in neither the ego nor in the subject but rather in the other, Lacan stresses that speech and language are beyond the subject's conscious control. They come from another place, outside of consciousness{{mdash}}"the unconscious is the discourse of the Other".<ref>Lacan, J., "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" in ''Écrits''.</ref> When conceiving the other as a place, Lacan refers to Freud's concept of psychical locality, in which the unconscious is described as "the other scene".

"It is the mother who first occupies the position of the big Other for the child", Dylan Evans explains, "it is she who receives the child's primitive cries and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message".<ref name="dylan_evans"/> The castration complex is formed when the child discovers that this other is not complete because there is a "[[lack (manque)]]" in the other. This means that there is always a [[Sign (semiotics)|signifier]] missing from the trove of signifiers constituted by the other. Lacan illustrates this incomplete other graphically by striking a bar through the symbol ''A''; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete other is the "barred other".<ref>Lacan, J., "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious" in ''Écrits'' and ''Seminar V: Les formations de l'inconscient''</ref>