Seminar IV

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 III Seminar V →

Object Relations and Freudian Structures
Seminar IV
Cover image often associated with editions of Seminar IV (varies by publisher and language).
French Title	Le Séminaire, Livre IV : La relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes
English Title	Object Relations and Freudian Structures (commonly used rendering)
Seminar Information
Seminar Date(s)	November 1956 – July 1957 (academic year)
Session Count	1956–1957 lecture cycle (session count varies by edition)
Location	Hôpital Sainte-Anne (Paris)
Psychoanalytic Content
Key Concepts	Object relation • lack • phallus • Frustration • Deprivation • Castration • Anxiety • Phobia • Fetishism • Oedipus complex • Desire of the Other • Signifier
Notable Themes	Lacan’s critique of post-Freudian object relations; "lack of the object" in Freud; the phallus across Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real; clinical structures in phobia and fetishism; myth and structural reading of cases
Freud Texts	Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (Little Hans) • "A Child is Being Beaten" • Freud’s papers on fetishism and female homosexuality
Chronology
Preceded by	Seminar III
Followed by	Seminar V

The Seminar, Book IV: Object Relations and Freudian Structures (French: Le Séminaire, Livre IV : La relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes) is the fourth annual seminar taught by Jacques Lacan during the 1956–1957 academic year. The seminar is a central statement of Lacan’s critique of object relations approaches dominant in mid-century psychoanalysis, particularly in the French institutional setting, and a major source for his thesis that Freudian theory is oriented less toward the "object" as such than toward the structural logic of the lack of the object.

Across the year, Lacan reinterprets key Freudian clinical materials—most notably the case of Little Hans—to argue that anxiety and phobia are not explained by a simple loss or absence of a gratifying object, but by the subject’s precarious position within the Oedipus complex and by the signifying function of the phallus as what is at stake in the desire of the Other. Seminar IV is also frequently cited for its systematic distinction among three modes of lack—frustration, deprivation, and castration—which Lacan uses to reframe clinical phenomena (including fetishism and perverse solutions) as structured responses to lack rather than as direct outcomes of instinctual deficit.

Historical and institutional context

Lacan’s "return to Freud" and the critique of object relations

Seminar IV belongs to the period of Lacan’s "return to Freud," in which he argues that post-Freudian schools had displaced Freud’s discovery of the unconscious by treating analysis as an adaptationist or developmental psychology centered on ego functions and "good objects." In Seminar IV, the polemical target is not only ego psychology but also the broad family of object-relations approaches (including those associated with Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and French institutional currents), insofar as Lacan interprets them as privileging object attachment over the symbolic logic that structures desire.

For Lacan, Freud’s central concern is not the "object" as a positive entity but the way the object is constituted as missing, substituted, and signified within the child’s entry into language and law. This shift allows Lacan to claim continuity between Freudian metapsychology and his own structural focus on the signifier, the Symbolic order, and the Other as the locus of demand and desire.

The Sainte-Anne setting and French psychoanalytic disputes

Seminar IV was delivered in the Parisian teaching context associated with Hôpital Sainte-Anne. As with Lacan’s other mid-1950s seminars, its content is shaped by both clinical concerns (diagnosis, technique, interpretation of cases) and institutional controversy in French psychoanalysis, including disputes over training, technique, and theoretical orientation. Lacan’s insistence on reading Freud "to the letter" and on treating the phallus as a signifier of lack rather than a biological organ directly contested prevalent clinical common sense and provided a framework for a distinctively Lacanian clinic of desire and anxiety.

Publication history

The seminar was established in a standard French edition by Jacques-Alain Miller and published by Éditions du Seuil in 1994, well after its oral delivery. As with other seminars, earlier circulation in notes and partial transcripts contributed to interpretive variance in terminology and emphasis, but scholarly citation typically relies on the Seuil edition (and any subsequent authorized translations where available).

Conceptual framework and methodology

From "object" to "lack of the object"

A guiding thesis of Seminar IV is that the analytic "object" is not best approached as a developmental target (good/bad object, internalized object) but as a structural placeholder for the subject’s relation to lack. Lacan proposes that Freudian theory turns on the ways in which lack is produced and managed through symbolization, prohibition, and substitution, particularly within the Oedipal field.

Within this framework, the "object relation" is reinterpreted as a relation mediated by signifiers and by the Other’s desire. The child is not simply attached to an object; rather, the child is positioned in the Other’s discourse and confronts the question of what the Other wants—what Lacan later formalizes as the enigma of the Other’s desire (Che vuoi?).

The phallus as signifier and as operator between registers

Seminar IV is a key locus for Lacan’s elaboration of the phallus as a signifying function rather than as the anatomical penis. Lacan argues that Freud introduced, between mother and child, a third term that has decisive signifying value: the phallus as what is at stake in the Other’s desire and in the triangulation that opens the Oedipal field.

Lacan’s seminar distinguishes (often in a shifting but programmatic manner) among:

• the Real penis (the biological organ and its corporeal intrusions into the child’s experience);
• the Imaginary phallus (the object the child may try to *be* for the mother, as an image of what she desires);
• the Symbolic phallus (the phallus as signifier—a marker of lack, law, and the desire of the Other).

This tripartite articulation allows Lacan to treat clinical phenomena as effects of register-crossings—moments when what should be symbolized returns as real, or when imaginary identifications substitute for symbolic operations.

Case-based structural reading and myth

Methodologically, Seminar IV exemplifies Lacan’s practice of close reading of Freud’s case histories as structured narratives. Lacan treats the Freudian case not as raw data but as a text in which signifiers, myths, and substitutions can be mapped. In the Little Hans material, for example, Lacan reads the child’s phobia as a "mythic" construction that attempts to install a missing paternal function through a substitute signifier (the phobic object) that can regulate anxiety.

Key themes, concepts, and case studies

The three forms of lack: frustration, deprivation, castration

One of the most cited doctrinal contributions of Seminar IV is Lacan’s systematic distinction among three modalities of lack:

• Frustration: an *imaginary* injury involving a *real* object (often associated with demands, refusal, and the child’s relation to satisfaction).
• Deprivation: a *real* lack of a *symbolic* object—often described as a "hole" produced by the absence of a signifier or symbolic guarantee, rather than the loss of a material thing.
• Castration: a *symbolic* lack or "debt" governed by law, through which the subject renounces certain imaginary identifications (notably the fantasy of being the phallus for the mother) and enters the Oedipal economy of desire and prohibition.

Lacan uses these distinctions to argue that clinical symptoms cannot be reduced to "frustration" in the ordinary sense (lack of gratification). Rather, symptoms often arise from failures or impasses in symbolic mediation—especially where castration is not assumed or is not supported by a functioning paternal signifier.

Anxiety and the Oedipal passage

Seminar IV develops a theory of anxiety linked to the subject’s position between a pre-Oedipal, primarily imaginary triangle (mother–child–image) and an Oedipal configuration requiring symbolic intervention. Lacan argues that anxiety is not simply caused by separation from the mother but can arise from the *failure* of separation—i.e., when the child remains too directly exposed to the mother’s desire without a mediating law or paternal function.

Within this view, castration is not treated as the ultimate source of anxiety. Instead, symbolic castration can function as a rescue: it limits the invasive demand of the Other and creates a space for desire to be articulated rather than experienced as engulfing or enigmatic threat.

The case of Little Hans: phobia as substitute for paternal intervention

Freud’s case of Little Hans is a central clinical text for Seminar IV. Lacan argues that Hans’ phobia is intelligible as a structural solution to a paternal deficiency: where the "real father" fails to intervene as a separating function between mother and child, the phobic object (e.g., the horse) emerges as a substitute signifier capable of organizing prohibition and regulating the child’s access to the maternal field.

Lacan interprets Hans’ anxiety as intensifying when the child encounters the Real of the body (including the emergence of genital excitement) and thereby perceives a gap between:

• what he imagines he is for the mother (the imaginary phallus**, what she desires), and
• what he "has" in reality (a small organ that cannot fill the symbolic function he imagines).

In Lacan’s reading, the phobic symptom functions as a signifying construction that installs a limit and relocates the question of the mother’s desire into a manageable form. The phobia thus has a structuring role: it produces a regulated field of danger and safety where symbolic law is otherwise missing or weakly installed.

Fetishism and the function of the veil

Seminar IV also treats fetishism as a privileged site for analyzing the relation between lack, disavowal, and the status of the phallus. Lacan engages Freud’s discussion of fetishism to argue that the fetish is not a random substitute but a signifying device that addresses the subject’s relation to the mother’s lack and to the threat (or promise) of castration. The fetish can function as a screen or "veil," stabilizing the subject’s relation to desire by fixing a signifier at the point where lack becomes intolerable or unrepresentable.

This analysis is often read as complementing Lacan’s structural distinction among neurosis, perversion, and psychosis: fetishism is treated not as a mere symptom but as a perverse solution that organizes lack through a specific relation to the signifier and to the law (often described in Lacanian terms via disavowal).

Female homosexuality, Dora, and the question of the feminine object

Seminar IV includes engagements with Freudian materials on female homosexuality and with canonical cases such as Dora. Lacan uses these readings to explore how the object relation is conceived from the standpoint of the "feminine object" and how the phallic function structures sexual difference not as anatomy but as a position in the symbolic economy of lack and desire.

A recurring claim is that assuming castration requires renouncing the fantasy of being the mother’s phallus. This renunciation is not determined by anatomical sex; rather, it is a symbolic operation that allows different relations to the phallic signifier (to "having" or "being" in Lacanian shorthand) to be taken up as positions within discourse and desire.

The phallus and the desire of the Other

Seminar IV contributes to the later Lacanian formula that the phallus is a privileged signifier of the desire of the Other. In the Oedipal field, the child confronts the mother’s desire as enigmatic; the phallus is the signifier that names what is at stake in that desire and thereby makes it negotiable via substitution and law.

This framing emphasizes that desire is not simply a biological drive toward an object but a structured effect of signification. The "object" is therefore inseparable from the signifying chain that makes it desirable, forbidden, or substitutable—an orientation that anticipates Lacan’s later elaborations of objet petit a as cause of desire, though Seminar IV itself remains focused on the phallus and lack as its central operators.

Theoretical significance and clinical implications

Reframing object relations within a symbolic clinic

Seminar IV is significant for repositioning "object relation" within a Lacanian framework centered on the symbolic. Where object-relations approaches emphasize internalized objects and early dyadic relations, Lacan emphasizes triangulation, naming, and the mediation of the Other’s desire through signifiers. The clinic is thus oriented toward how symptoms organize lack and how signifiers function as supports, limits, or screens (e.g., the phobic object, the fetish as veil).

This reframing also informs Lacanian technique: interpretation is directed less toward supplying a "good object" or repairing an object bond and more toward locating the subject’s position in the Other’s discourse—how demand, desire, and law are articulated and where lack is being managed through symptomatic construction.

Anxiety, separation, and the function of castration

By treating anxiety as arising from exposure to the unmediated desire of the Other, Seminar IV offers a clinical rationale for why certain symptoms serve protective or structuring functions. Phobia can create distance; fetishism can veil; both can localize and limit the point where lack becomes overwhelming. In this model, symbolic castration is not simply traumatic deprivation but an operation that introduces limits and makes desire possible as distinct from demand.

Foundations for later Lacanian developments

Seminar IV is commonly read as a bridge between Lacan’s mid-1950s formalization of the Symbolic order and his later theorization of desire, fantasy, and the object cause. Its emphasis on lack, substitution, and signifying mediation provides a backdrop for subsequent seminars on the formations of the unconscious and the logic of desire, and for the later conceptual differentiation of the phallus and objet petit a.

Reception and legacy

Influence within Lacanian schools

Within Lacanian psychoanalysis, Seminar IV is a canonical reference for:

• the triad frustration–deprivation–castration as a diagnostic and conceptual tool;
• the reading of phobia as a structural solution installing a signifier where paternal mediation fails;
• the fetish as a veil/screen managing lack;
• the phallus as a signifier rather than a biological organ.

It is frequently taught alongside Lacan’s other "early" seminars (I–VI) as part of the transition from an emphasis on the Imaginary (notably the mirror stage) to a systematic symbolic reading of clinical structures and Freudian case texts.

Wider academic reception and critique

In broader psychoanalytic and humanities scholarship, Seminar IV is often cited as a major Lacanian intervention into the object-relations field, providing a linguistically and structurally oriented alternative to developmental models. Critics sometimes argue that Lacan’s polemical framing can flatten the diversity of object-relations theories or understate their clinical motivations; supporters argue that his approach clarifies the specifically Freudian stakes of lack, prohibition, and desire as symbolic effects rather than as needs for objects.

The seminar’s readings of sexual difference and the phallic function have also generated extensive debate, including feminist and philosophical critiques as well as Lacanian defenses that stress the distinction between anatomy and symbolic position (i.e., the phallus as signifier rather than organ).

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
• Seminar III
• Seminar V
• Object relations theory
• Lack
• Phallus
• Desire of the Other
• Oedipus complex
• Castration
• Phobia
• Fetishism
• Little Hans
• Dora
• A Child is Being Beaten

Further reading

• Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre IV : La relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes (1956–1957). Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1994.
• Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge, 1996.
• Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.
• Freud, Sigmund. "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" (1909) ("Little Hans").
• Freud, Sigmund. "Fetishism" (1927).
• Freud, Sigmund. "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905) ("Dora").