Seminar XXII
| R.S.I. | |
|---|---|
| Seminar XXII | |
| French Title | Le Séminaire, Livre XXII : R.S.I. |
| English Title | The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXII: R.S.I. |
| Seminar Information | |
| Seminar Date(s) | November 1974 – May 1975 |
| Session Count | 16 sessions |
| Location | Université Paris VIII (Vincennes) |
| Psychoanalytic Content | |
| Key Concepts | Real • Symbolic • Imaginary • Borromean knot • Topology • Sinthome • Object a • Jouissance |
| Notable Themes | Knotting of the registers; topology and structure; redefinition of subjectivity; limits of meaning; analytic practice |
| Freud Texts | Freud on repetition, symptom, and identification |
| Theoretical Context | |
| Period | Late period |
| Register | Real/Symbolic/Imaginary (Borromean) |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Seminar XXI |
| Followed by | Seminar XXIII |
R.S.I. (Le Séminaire, Livre XXII : R.S.I.) is the twenty-second annual seminar delivered by Jacques Lacan during the academic year 1974–1975. Presented at the Université Paris VIII in Vincennes under the auspices of the École freudienne de Paris, the seminar marks a decisive moment in Lacan’s late teaching, characterized by an intensive use of topology—especially the Borromean knot—to formalize the relations among the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary.[1]
Unlike earlier seminars in which the three registers were treated as conceptually distinct but dynamically interacting dimensions, Seminar XXII advances the thesis that subjectivity depends on their *knotting*. The seminar thus provides the immediate theoretical groundwork for The Sinthome, where Lacan will introduce the notion of the sinthome as a fourth term capable of stabilizing the knot.
Introductory overview
R.S.I. belongs to Lacan’s late period, in which he increasingly distances himself from linguistic structuralism and emphasizes the primacy of the Real as that which resists meaning. In this seminar, the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary are no longer treated primarily as interpretive categories but as topological consistencies whose linkage—or failure of linkage—determines psychic structure.
Lacan’s guiding claim is that the subject exists only insofar as these three registers are knotted in a Borromean fashion: if one ring is cut, the other two fall apart. This formalization allows Lacan to rethink neurosis, psychosis, and perversion not as stable typologies but as different modes of knotting and unknotting.
Historical and institutional context
Vincennes and the late seminars
After his 1969 departure from the École normale supérieure, Lacan delivered his final seminars at Vincennes (Paris VIII), an experimental university shaped by post-1968 intellectual currents. The audience of Seminar XXII included analysts, philosophers, mathematicians, and students, reflecting the increasingly interdisciplinary character of Lacan’s teaching.
By the mid-1970s, Lacan had already dissolved the classical hierarchy of the École freudienne de Paris and was openly questioning the transmissibility of psychoanalysis through traditional pedagogical forms. R.S.I. should be read against this background of institutional instability and theoretical radicalization.
From language to topology
Earlier seminars (notably Encore) had already signaled Lacan’s dissatisfaction with the idea that the unconscious could be exhaustively understood as a linguistic structure. In Seminar XXII, topology becomes a privileged mode of formalization precisely because it does not rely on meaning or representation. As Lacan remarks, topology allows him to “say something real” without passing through sense.[2]
Conceptual framework and methodology
The three registers revisited
The Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary—introduced in Lacan’s work in the 1950s—are redefined in R.S.I. as autonomous consistencies.
- The Imaginary is associated with form, image, and coherence.
- The Symbolic corresponds to language, law, and differential relations among signifiers.
- The Real is what does not cease not to be written: that which resists symbolization and imaginary capture.
In Seminar XXII, none of these registers is reducible to the others. Their interdependence is strictly structural rather than dialectical.
The Borromean knot
The central formal device of the seminar is the Borromean knot, a three-ring link in which no two rings are directly linked, yet the removal of any one causes the entire structure to fall apart. Lacan adopts this knot as a model for subjectivity itself.
- "If you cut one, the other two are freed. That is what defines the Borromean knot." [3]
This model allows Lacan to articulate how a disturbance in one register (for example, foreclosure in the Symbolic) necessarily affects the others, without presupposing causal primacy.
Topology as method
Topology in R.S.I. is not metaphorical but methodological. Lacan insists that knots are not illustrations of theory but *theory itself*. The seminar thus resists paraphrase: diagrams, manipulations of strings, and spatial reasoning are integral to its conceptual content.
Key themes and concepts
The subject as knot
One of the most radical consequences of R.S.I. is the redefinition of the subject. The subject is no longer primarily a divided effect of the signifier but the very knotting of the three registers. Subjectivity is therefore contingent, precarious, and dependent on a specific mode of linkage.
This shift also reframes the Freudian concept of identification. Identification is no longer understood solely in symbolic or imaginary terms but as a contribution to the stabilization of the knot.
Symptom and consistency
In Seminar XXII, the symptom is approached less as a message to be deciphered than as a mode of consistency. Symptoms hold the registers together; they “make a knot hold.” This perspective anticipates the later distinction between symptom and sinthome, elaborated in Seminar XXIII.
The emphasis on consistency leads Lacan to reconsider the clinical aim of analysis. Rather than dissolving symptoms, analysis may involve modifying or reinforcing certain knots to prevent catastrophic unknotting.
Psychosis and unknotting
Psychosis occupies a privileged place in R.S.I. because it exemplifies what happens when the Borromean knot fails. Lacan revisits the concept of foreclosure but now interprets it topologically: foreclosure corresponds to a failure in the knotting of the Symbolic with the other registers.
This approach allows Lacan to conceptualize psychotic stabilization strategies as attempts at re-knotting, sometimes through delusion, sometimes through rigid imaginary identifications.
Jouissance and the Real
The seminar places renewed emphasis on jouissance as a phenomenon of the Real. Jouissance is not meaning-laden enjoyment but a bodily event tied to the Real’s insistence. The Borromean framework allows Lacan to locate jouissance at the points where the registers intersect without collapsing into one another.
Theoretical significance and clinical implications
Beyond interpretation
Seminar XXII has profound implications for analytic technique. If symptoms function as knots, interpretation alone may be insufficient or even destabilizing. Lacan suggests that analysts must attend to the structural role a symptom plays rather than assuming that insight will resolve it.
This orientation represents a significant departure from classical Freudian technique and from Lacan’s own earlier emphasis on interpretation and the signifier.
Preparation for the sinthome
R.S.I. is widely regarded as the immediate precursor to Seminar XXIII. The problems encountered in stabilizing the three-ring knot lead Lacan to posit the necessity of a fourth term—the sinthome—that can secure the linkage when Borromean consistency fails.
Without R.S.I., the theoretical move of The Sinthome would be unintelligible.
Reception and legacy
Because Seminar XXII remains unpublished in an official critical edition, its reception has been mediated through notes, audio recordings, and later commentaries. It is often regarded as one of Lacan’s most difficult seminars due to its heavy reliance on topology and minimal reliance on discursive explanation.
Nevertheless, R.S.I. has been enormously influential in late Lacanian theory, particularly in clinical discussions of psychosis, autism, and so-called “ordinary psychosis.” Its topological turn has also attracted attention from philosophers and mathematicians interested in non-representational models of subjectivity.[4]
See also
- Jacques Lacan
- Seminar XXI
- Seminar XXIII
- Real
- Symbolic
- Imaginary
- Borromean knot
- Topology
- Sinthome
- École freudienne de Paris
References
- ↑ Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. Paris: Fayard, 1993; English trans. Columbia University Press, 1997.
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XXII, session of 18 December 1974 (circulating transcription).
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XXII, session of 15 January 1975.
- ↑ Miller, Jacques-Alain. “The Later Lacan.” In Reading Seminar XXIII. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002.
Further reading
- Lacan, Jacques. The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII). Trans. A. R. Price. Cambridge: Polity, 2016.
- Miller, Jacques-Alain. Extimité. Paris: Navarin, 1988.
- Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996.
- Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. Columbia University Press, 1997.
English Audio
| Date | Text | |
| 19 novembre 1974 | link link | |
| 10 décembre 1974 | link | link |
| 17 décembre 1974 | link | link |
| 14 janvier 1975 | link | link |
| 21 janvier 1975 | link | link |
| 11 février 1975 | link | link |
| 18 février 1975 | link | link |
| 11 mars 1975 | link | link |
| 18 mars 1975 | link | link |
| 08 avril 1975 | link | link |
| 15 avril 1975 | link | link |
| 13 mai 1975 | link | link |
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