Extimacy

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French: extimité

[edit] Jacques Lacan

[edit] Translation

Lacan coins the term extimité by applying the prefix ex -- from exterieur, "exterior" -- to the Freud word intimité -- "intimacy".

[edit] "Inside" and "Outside"

The resulting neologism, which may be rendered "extimacy in English, neatly expresses the way in which psychoanalysis problematizes the opposition between "inside" and "outside"[1]


[edit] Examples

For example, the real is just as much inside as outside. The unconscious is not a purely interior psychic system but an intersubjective structure -- "the unconscious is outside".

[edit] Subject as Ex-centric

Again, the Other is "something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me."[2]

 Furthermore, the center of the subject is outside; the subject is ex-centric.[3]


[edit] Topological Structure of Extimacy

The structure of extimacy is perfectly expressed in the topology of the torus and of the moebius strip.

[edit] See Also

[edit] References

  1. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p. 139
  2. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p. 71
  3. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.165, 171

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