Editing Jacques Lacan (section)

====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''.