Seminar XXI

Jacques Lacan's Seminars : I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX · X · XI · XII · XIII · XIV · XV · XVI · XVII · XVIII · XIX · XX · XXI · XXII · XXIII · XXIV · XXV · XXVI · XXVII I. Freud's technical writings II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis III. The Psychoses IV. The Object Relations V. The Formations of the Unconscious VI. Desire and its Interpretation VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis VIII. Transference IX. Identification The Names of the Father X. Anxiety XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis XII. Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis XIII. The Object of Psychoanalysis XIV. The Logic of Fantasy XV. The Psychoanalytic Act XVI. From One Other to the Other XVII. The Reverse of Psychoanalysis XVIII. On a Discourse That Would Not Be Semblance XIX. Or Worse XX. Encore XXV. The Moment of Concluding XXVII. Dissolution ← Seminar XX Seminar XXII →

Les non-dupes errent
Seminar XXI
Image associated with transcriptions of Les non-dupes errent.
French Title	Le Séminaire, Livre XXI : Les non-dupes errent
English Title	Seminar XXI: The Non-Duped Err
Seminar Information
Seminar Date(s)	1973–1974 (academic year)
Location	Paris
Psychoanalytic Content
Key Concepts	Names-of-the-Father • Borromean knot • Real • Symbolic order • Imaginary • Jouissance • There is no sexual relationship • Lalangue
Notable Themes	Critique of "non-duped" knowledge; Father and the Names-of-the-Father; knots and consistency; belief and deception; symbolic fiction and access to the Real
Freud Texts	Totem and Taboo • Moses and Monotheism • Civilization and Its Discontents
Theoretical Context
Period	Late period (knot-theoretical / RSI phase)
Register	Real/Symbolic/Imaginary (topological articulation)
Chronology
Preceded by	Seminar XX
Followed by	Seminar XXII

Les non-dupes errent (Seminar XXI: The Non-Duped Err) is a late seminar of Jacques Lacan, delivered in Paris during the 1973–1974 academic year under the auspices of the École Freudienne de Paris. The title is a pun typical of Lacan's use of lalangue, homophonically evoking les noms-du-père ("the Names-of-the-Father") and asserting that "those who are not duped err." The seminar revisits the question of the Name-of-the-Father and pluralizes it into "Names-of-the-Father," while simultaneously developing Lacan's turn to topology and the Borromean knot as a way of thinking the linkage of Real, Symbolic and Imaginary.

Les non-dupes errent is often situated as a bridge between Encore (1972–1973), with its emphasis on jouissance, feminine sexuality and the non-existence of the sexual relationship, and R.S.I. (1974–1975), where the three registers are systematically formalized through knots. The seminar explores how subjects who take themselves to be "non-duped" by symbolic fictions—by the Father, by discourse, by transference—may in fact be most profoundly "in error" (ils errent) with regard to the Real.

Because Seminar XXI remains officially unpublished, its content is known through stenographic notes, audio recordings and secondary commentaries, and is therefore cited with caution in scholarly work.

Historical and institutional context

From "Encore" to knots

Les non-dupes errent follows immediately upon Encore, where Lacan had articulated the formulas of sexuation, distinguished phallic from "Other" jouissance, and reaffirmed that "there is no sexual relationship" (il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel). In Encore, the category of jouissance and the statement "The Woman does not exist" are central; Seminar XXI extends these concerns by interrogating the role of the Father and the Name-of-the-Father in providing (or failing to provide) symbolic anchoring.

By 1973 Lacan's teaching had entered what commentators often call the **knot-theoretical** or **RSI period**, marked by the increasing importance of topological figures (especially the Borromean knot) for conceptualizing the subject and the clinic. Les non-dupes errent stands at the threshold of this phase: the three registers are already foregrounded, and the Borromean knot is beginning to displace earlier diagrams (such as Schema L or the Graph of Desire) as the preferred model.

The École Freudienne de Paris and internal debates

Institutionally, the seminar is delivered within the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP), founded by Lacan in 1964 after his break with the Société Française de Psychanalyse. The early 1970s saw growing tensions within the EFP concerning training, the status of the cartel as a mode of collectivization, and the relation between Lacan's increasingly formal teaching and clinical practice. Les non-dupes errent can be read against this backdrop: it repeatedly raises questions about those who believe themselves "not duped" by the School, by the transference, or by the paternal function, and about the risk of a "knowing" that sidesteps subjective implication.

The title's allusion to "Names-of-the-Father" also echoes Lacan's aborted 1963 seminar Les Noms-du-Père, which was cut short after a single session when Lacan was barred from training analysts within the IPA framework. In Seminar XXI, the question of the Father returns not as a single Name-of-the-Father but as a plurality of "names" (supports, signifiers, knots) that can hold together the subject's reality.

Publication status

As of the early 21st century, Les non-dupes errent has not been published as an official volume in the Seuil series of Lacan's Séminaire. The seminar circulates in French via transcriptions produced from recordings and notes (often indexed session by session), and these versions vary in detail and editorial choices. No authorized English translation exists; English-language scholarship generally relies on French transcriptions and oral teachings within Lacanian schools.

Conceptual framework and methodology

The title: "The non-duped err"

The French title Les non-dupes errent is built on a phonetic play: it sounds like les noms du Père ("the Names-of-the-Father"). The pun juxtaposes two statements:

• Those who are not duped (les non-dupes) are the ones who err (ils errent).
• It is by way of the "names of the Father" (les noms du Père)—symbolic fictions—that subjects gain access to a certain ordering of the world.

Lacan proposes that the refusal to be "duped" by the symbolic (for example, by dismissing the Father, the unconscious, or transference as mere illusions) does not produce lucidity but rather a more radical misrecognition of the Real. The subject who insists on not being deceived by the signifier may be the one most misled by it.

This pun exemplifies Lacan's reliance on lalangue: the unconscious is not just structured like a language but enjoys the equivocations of language, which may sustain clinical and theoretical insight.

Real, Symbolic, Imaginary and the Borromean knot

Les non-dupes errent is framed by the triad of Real, Symbolic and Imaginary (RSI). Lacan's central methodological move is to represent their interlinkage through the **Borromean knot**: three rings interlinked such that the cutting of any one ring causes the other two to fall apart.

In the context of this seminar:

• The **Symbolic** includes the paternal signifiers, discourse, and the structures of law and language that "dupe" the subject.
• The **Imaginary** involves identifications, images and the ego; it is where the subject misrecognizes itself and others.
• The **Real** is that which resists symbolization and imagination; it is what is at stake when symbolic supports fail or become too rigid.

The Borromean knot becomes a way to think how these three orders hold together (or do not) for a given subject, and how "father-names" may function as points of knotting.

Discourse, knowledge and belief

Lacan continues his work on the four discourses (Master, University, Hysteric, Analyst), introduced formally in L'envers de la psychanalyse. In Les non-dupes errent, these discourses are revisited in light of the question: who is "duped" by discourse, and who pretends not to be?

Lacan distinguishes:

• **Knowledge (savoir)** as articulated in discourse (science, ideology, theory);
• **Belief and faith** in the unconscious and in the symbolic;
• **Error and wandering (errance)** as effects of refusing to be traversed by the signifier.

The "non-duped" subject may be one who aligns with scientific or cynical discourse, claiming to see through fictions, yet without acknowledging their own implication in the signifying chain and in transference. The seminar thus interrogates the place of psychoanalysis vis-à-vis science, religion and politics.

Key themes, concepts and lines of argument

The non-duped versus the duped

The core aphorism of the seminar—"The non-duped err"—can be read on several levels:

• **Clinical**: Patients who insist on not being duped (by love, by the analyst, by the unconscious) may be caught in rigid defense formations, refusing the "deception" necessary for analytic work (for example, the supposition that the analyst knows).
• **Ethical**: To enter analysis is in a sense to consent to being "duped" by speech—to take seriously slips, dreams, and symptoms as meaningful. The one who refuses this may miss the Real at stake in their symptom.
• **Political and epistemological**: Modern discourse often valorizes "demystification" and suspicion (e.g. ideology critique). Lacan suggests that a certain kind of suspicion—refusal of any symbolic guarantee—can itself become a new dogma, blinding the subject to the structural dimension of the signifier.

In this light, "being duped" is not naivety but a necessary passage through symbolic fictions (such as the paternal metaphor) that allows a subject to situate themselves. The question becomes: how to be "well duped," that is, to use symbolic structures without taking them as ultimate ground.

Names-of-the-Father and their plurality

Where earlier work often spoke of the Name-of-the-Father in the singular (as in The Psychoses and the 1958 text "On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis"), Les non-dupes errent elaborates the notion of **Names-of-the-Father** in the plural.

The pluralization suggests:

• There is no single, transcendental Father-signifier that guarantees the Symbolic.
• A variety of signifiers, institutions and practices can function as "father" in the sense of providing a point of quilting (point de capiton) or knotting between the registers.
• The decline of traditional paternal authority in modernity does not abolish the function but redistributes it among new "names" (science, state, ideology, the analyst, etc.).

In psychosis, the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father had been described as a hole in the Symbolic that returns in the Real. In the later knot-theoretical period, this foreclosure can be rethought in terms of failures of knotting: the rings do not hold together, or require a supplementary device (a sinthome, later elaborated in Le Sinthome) to maintain consistency.

The Father, deception, and the Real

Les non-dupes errent treats the Father not primarily as a biographical figure but as a structural function that mediates between Symbolic and Real. The Father is "the one who is supposed to have been duped by the signifier before you," opening a space where the subject can be inscribed.

The seminar takes up Freudian texts where the Father is central—Totem and Taboo, Moses and Monotheism, Civilization and Its Discontents—to show how the Father embodies paradoxical functions: law and transgression, love and jouissance, origin and lack. The paternal fiction is itself a kind of "deception," but one that allows a relation to the Real of castration and sexual non-rapport.

Those who refuse this paternal deception in the name of being "non-duped" may be drawn toward other, often more rigid forms of belief (in science, in conspiracy, in total transparency) that obscure their dependence on the signifier.

Jouissance and the continuation of "Encore"

Although Les non-dupes errent shifts the focus from feminine sexuality to the Father and knotting, it remains deeply concerned with jouissance. It can be read as a continuation of Encore, asking: how is jouissance distributed and constrained by the Names-of-the-Father and by the subject's relation to the symbolic "deception" of law?

Key points include:

• **Superegoic jouissance**: the obscene and ferocious dimension of the superego, already highlighted by Lacan, is linked here to the failure or excess of paternal mediation. Where paternal "names" are discredited, superegoic commands ("Enjoy!") may proliferate.
• **Sexual non-rapport**: the statement that "there is no sexual relationship" remains in force. Les non-dupes errent asks how the Father's name attempts (and fails) to write such a relationship, and how subjects position themselves with respect to this impossibility.
• **Errancy as jouissance**: the wandering (errance) of the non-duped is not simply cognitive error; it is saturated with jouissance, often in the form of repetition, symptom, or delirious certainty.

Belief, transference, and the analyst

A recurrent question in the seminar concerns belief in the unconscious and in the analyst's function. The analyst must accept a certain "deception":

• To occupy the place of the subject supposed to know in transference, even while knowing that this is a fiction;
• To be, in a sense, "duped" by the analysand's speech: to take seriously what is said and unsaid;
• To rely on analytic discourse (one of the four discourses) as a particular configuration of knowledge and truth.

By contrast, the subject who insists on complete lucidity, refusing any supposition of knowledge, may block the analytic process. Les non-dupes errent thus provides a reflexive commentary on the ethics of psychoanalysis: analysis is not disabusing the analysand of all illusions but helping them discern which "deceptions" are structurally necessary, and where the Real insists.

Knots, consistency and "sinthomatic" supports

Topologically, the seminar anticipates later developments in R.S.I. and Le Sinthome by exploring how the subject's consistency depends on how the Real, Symbolic and Imaginary are knotted. Issues treated include:

• When and how does cutting one ring (e.g., Symbolic disavowal of the Father) cause the others to unravel?
• Can alternative knots (e.g., four-ring linkages) model different modes of stabilization?
• How might the Father, or Names-of-the-Father, be conceived as a particular way of tying the three registers together?

While the full theory of the sinthome (as a fourth ring that holds together RSI) belongs to later seminars, Les non-dupes errent already suggests that beyond symbolic identification, singular ways of knotting jouissance and language support the subject.

Theoretical significance and clinical implications

From the paternal metaphor to plural "father-names"

Earlier, Lacan formalized neurosis through the paternal metaphor, where the Name-of-the-Father substitutes for the maternal desire to produce the phallic signification. Les non-dupes errent complicates this by foregrounding the **plurality** of father-names and by emphasizing knots over metaphors.

This shift has several consequences:

• It loosens the centrality of a single, normative paternal function and allows for multiple, historically and culturally variable supports.
• It provides a framework for understanding clinical stabilizations that do not rely on traditional paternal authority.
• It prepares the way for thinking psychosis not only via foreclosure but via alternate knotting and "sinthomatic" inventions.

Clinically, this broadens the field of what can count as a "Name-of-the-Father": a symptom, a vocation, a body practice, or a particular discourse may function as a father-name insofar as it knots RSI.

The ethics of being "well duped"

Les non-dupes errent contributes to Lacan's ethical reflection on psychoanalysis. Rather than positioning analysis as a practice that simply dispels illusions, it suggests that some "deceptions" are constitutive: the subject cannot live without certain fictions (about love, about origin, about meaning). The question is whether these fictions allow access to the Real and sustain a livable knot, or whether they lead to errancy, rigidification, or collapse.

For the analyst, the ethical task is not to unmask every fiction but to enable the analysand to assume their position in relation to the signifier and jouissance—neither cynically disavowing all "duping" nor blindly clinging to guarantees.

Diagnosis, structure and late Lacanian clinic

The knot-theoretical perspective developed around Les non-dupes errent affects structural diagnosis:

• **Neurosis, perversion and psychosis** can be approached not only via mechanisms like repression, disavowal and foreclosure, but also via different types of knotting and the presence/absence of stabilizing father-names.
• The importance of **belief** (e.g. in the Other, in the symptom, in the unconscious) becomes a diagnostic factor: the non-duped stance may appear in certain obsessive or paranoid configurations.
• Clinicians are encouraged to attend to how the subject "ties together" their world and how interventions might risk cutting or re-tying these knots.

In this sense, Seminar XXI helps usher in a clinic more focused on consistency and support (support de jouissance) than on interpretation alone.

Reception and legacy

Within Lacanian schools

Within Lacanian psychoanalytic institutions, Les non-dupes errent is widely studied despite its unpublished status. Reading groups and teaching seminars often work through the French transcriptions session by session, particularly in relation to:

• The transition from Encore to R.S.I.;
• The evolution of the concept of the Father;
• The relationship between knots, discourse and the clinic.

The punning title has become a commonplace reference in Lacanian discussions: "the non-duped err" is frequently cited as a warning against overly rationalist or "non-believing" approaches to psychoanalysis that neglect the structural necessity of symbolic fictions.

Academic and theoretical discussions

In the broader academic world, Seminar XXI is less accessible than earlier, fully published seminars, but it has nonetheless informed work in philosophy, literary theory, and cultural studies through secondary commentaries that draw on its key motifs (non-duped, Names-of-the-Father, knots).

Themes drawn from Les non-dupes errent have been used to think:

• The limits of ideology critique and demystification in political theory;
• The persistence of belief in supposedly "disenchanted" societies;
• The status of foundational fictions (nation, law, gender) as necessary "deceptions" that nevertheless have real effects.

However, the seminar's unpublished status means that scholars often cite it sparingly, relying instead on more accessible knot-theoretical texts such as R.S.I. and Le Sinthome.

Controversies and interpretive challenges

Because Les non-dupes errent is known through transcriptions of varying reliability, its detailed phrasing and session demarcations are sometimes contested. Different Lacanian schools may privilege different versions of the text, leading to subtle divergences in interpretation (for example, in how the seminar is periodized or which sessions are emphasized).

Moreover, Lacan's increasingly allusive style, reliance on equivocations, and use of mathematical and topological references make Seminar XXI challenging even for experienced readers. It is often recommended that students first familiarize themselves with earlier seminars (II, III, XI, XVII, XX) before tackling the knot-theoretical period.

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• Seminar XX
• Seminar XXII
• Name-of-the-Father
• Names-of-the-Father
• Borromean knot
• Real
• Symbolic order
• Imaginary order
• Jouissance
• Lalangue
• There is no sexual relationship
• Psychoanalytic theory
• Lacanian psychoanalysis

Further reading

• Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre XXI : Les non-dupes errent (1973–1974). Unpublished seminar. Circulating transcriptions (French).
• Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge, 1996 (entries: "Name-of-the-Father", "Borromean knot", "RSI").
• Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

• Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 (chapters on the late seminars and topology).
• Secondary commentaries on the late Lacan (e.g. works on Encore, R.S.I. and knot theory) that discuss Les non-dupes errent within the RSI period.
• Clinical teaching materials from Lacanian schools (École de la Cause freudienne, etc.) devoted to Seminar XXI and the question of the "non-duped".

English translation

An English translation of Seminar XXI, made from unpublished French transcripts, was made by a reading group associated with Jacques Lacan in Ireland and arranged in a presentable form by Tony Hughes.

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English Audio

Date	PDF
link	link
20 novembre 1973	link
11 décembre 1973	link
18 décembre 1973	link
08 janvier 1974	link
15 janvier 1974	link
12 février 1974	link
19 février 1974	link
12 mars 1974	link
19 mars 1974	link
09 avril 1974	link
23 avril 1974	link
14 mai 1974	link
21 mai 1974	link
11 juin 1974	link