Extimacy

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French: extimité

Jacques Lacan

Translation

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

"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]

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".

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]

Topological Structure of Extimacy

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

See Also

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