Editing Jacques Lacan (section)

===Three orders (plus one)===
Lacan considered psychic functions to occur within a universal matrix. The Real, Imaginary and Symbolic are properties of this matrix, which make up part of every psychic function. This is not analogous to Freud's concept of id, ego and superego since in Freud's model certain functions take place within components of the psyche while Lacan thought that all three orders were part of every function. Lacan refined the concept of the orders over decades, resulting in inconsistencies in his writings. He eventually added a fourth component, the sinthome.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bailly|first=Lionel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9S6tMvU21K0C|title=Lacan: A Beginner's Guide|date=1 December 2012|publisher=Oneworld Publications|isbn=978-1-78074-162-8|language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|77}}

====The Imaginary====
{{Main|The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)}}
[[The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)|The Imaginary]] is the field of images and imagination. The main illusions of this order are synthesis, autonomy, duality, and resemblance. Lacan thought that the relationship created within the [[mirror stage]] between the ego and the reflected image means that the ego and the Imaginary order itself are places of radical alienation: "alienation is constitutive of the Imaginary order".<ref name="seminar_III">Lacan, ''Seminar III: The Psychoses''.</ref> This relationship is also [[narcissistic]].

In ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis'', Lacan argues that [[the Symbolic]] order structures the visual field of the Imaginary, which means that it involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the foundation of the symbolic, the signified and signification are part of the Imaginary order. Language has symbolic and Imaginary connotations—in its Imaginary aspect, language is the "wall of language" that inverts and distorts the discourse of the Other. The Imaginary, however, is rooted in the subject's relationship with his or her own body (the image of the body). In ''Fetishism: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real'', Lacan argues that in the sexual plane the Imaginary appears as sexual display and courtship love.

Insofar as identification with the analyst is the objective of analysis, Lacan accused major psychoanalytic schools of reducing the practice of psychoanalysis to the Imaginary order.<ref>Écrits, "The Directions of the Treatment."</ref> Instead, Lacan proposes the use of the symbolic to dislodge the disabling fixations of the Imaginary—the analyst transforms the images into words. "The use of the Symbolic", he argued, "is the only way for the analytic process to cross the plane of identification."<ref name="seminar_XI">Lacan, J. ''Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis''.</ref>

====The Symbolic====
{{Main|The Symbolic}}
In his Seminar IV, "La relation d'objet", Lacan argues that the concepts of "Law" and "Structure" are unthinkable without language—thus [[the Symbolic]] is a linguistic dimension. This order is not equivalent to language, however, since language involves the Imaginary and the Real as well. The dimension proper to language in the Symbolic is that of the [[Sign (semiotics)|signifier]]—that is, a dimension in which elements have no positive existence, but which are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences.

The Symbolic is also the field of radical alterity—that is, the Other; the unconscious is the discourse of this Other. It is the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the [[Oedipus complex]]. The Symbolic is the domain of culture as opposed to the Imaginary order of nature. As important elements in the Symbolic, the concepts of [[death]] and [[lack (manque)|lack (''manque'')]] connive to make of the [[Pleasure principle (psychology)|pleasure principle]] the regulator of the distance from [[Das ding an sich|the Thing]] (in German, "''das Ding an sich''") and the [[death drive]] that goes "beyond the pleasure principle by means of repetition"{{mdash}}"the death drive is only a mask of the Symbolic order".<ref name="seminar_II"/>

By working in the Symbolic order, the analyst is able to produce changes in the subjective position of the person undergoing psychoanalysis. These changes will produce imaginary effects because the Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic.<ref name="dylan_evans"/>

====The Real====
{{Main|The Real}}
Lacan's concept of [[the Real]] dates back to 1936 and his doctoral thesis on [[psychosis]]. It was a term that was popular at the time, particularly with [[Émile Meyerson]], who referred to it as "an ontological absolute, a true [[being-in-itself]]".<ref name="dylan_evans" />{{rp|162}} Lacan returned to the theme of the Real in 1953 and continued to develop it until his death. The Real, for Lacan, is not synonymous with [[reality]]. Not only opposed to [[The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)|the Imaginary]], the Real is also exterior to [[the Symbolic]]. Unlike the latter, which is constituted in terms of oppositions (i.e. presence/absence), "there is no absence in the Real".<ref name="seminar_II"/> Whereas the Symbolic opposition "presence/absence" implies the possibility that something may be missing from the Symbolic, "the Real is always in its place".<ref name="seminar_XI"/> If the Symbolic is a set of differentiated elements (signifiers), the Real in itself is undifferentiated{{mdash}}it bears no fissure. The Symbolic introduces "a cut in the real" in the process of signification: "it is the world of words that creates the world of things—things originally confused in the 'here and now' of the all in the process of coming into being".<ref>Lacan, J., "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" in ''Écrits''.</ref> The Real is that which is outside language and that resists symbolization absolutely. In Seminar XI Lacan defines the Real as "the impossible" because it is impossible to imagine, impossible to integrate into the Symbolic, and impossible to attain. It is this resistance to symbolization that lends the Real its traumatic quality. Finally, the Real is the object of [[anxiety (mood)|anxiety]], insofar as it lacks any possible mediation and is "the essential object which is not an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety ''par excellence''."<ref name="seminar_II"/>

====The Sinthome====
{{Main|Sinthome}}
The term "sinthome" ({{IPA|fr|sɛ̃tom|lang}}) was introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar ''Le sinthome'' (1975–76). According to Lacan, ''sinthome'' is the Latin way (1495 Rabelais, IV,63<ref>The term used by Rabelais is not sinthome but ''symptomates'': "Amis, respondit Pantagruel, à tous les doubtes et questions par vous proposées compete une seule solution, et à tous telz symptomates et accidents une seule medicine." (François Rabelais, ''Les Cinq Livres'', La Pochothèque, 1994, p. 1193)</ref>) of spelling the Greek origin of the French word ''symptôme'', meaning [[symptom]]. The seminar is a continuing elaboration of his [[topology]], extending the previous seminar's focus (''RSI'') on the [[Borromean rings|Borromean Knot]] and an exploration of the writings of [[James Joyce]]. Lacan redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of his topology of the subject.

In "Psychoanalysis and its Teachings" (''Écrits'') Lacan views the symptom as inscribed in a writing process, not as ciphered message which was the traditional notion. In his seminar "L'angoisse" (1962–63) he states that the symptom does not call for interpretation: in itself it is not a call to the [[Other (philosophy)|Other]] but a pure ''[[jouissance]]'' addressed to no-one. This is a shift from the linguistic definition of the symptom{{mdash}}as a [[Sign (linguistics)|signifier]]{{mdash}}to his assertion that "the symptom can only be defined as the way in which each subject enjoys (''jouit'') the unconscious in so far as the unconscious determines the subject". He goes from conceiving the symptom as a message which can be deciphered by reference to the unconscious structured like a language to seeing it as the trace of the particular modality of the subject's ''jouissance''.