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Lack
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"[[Lack]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[manque]]'')
The term "[[lack]]" is always related, in [[Lacan]]'s teaching, to [[desire]].
Ii is a [[lack]] which causes [[desire]] to arise.<ref>{{S8}} p.139</ref>
However, the precise nature of what is [[lack]]ing varies over the course of [[Lacan]]'s [[Works of Jacques Lacan|work]].
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When the term first appears, in 1955, [[lack]] designates first and foremost a [[lack]] of [[being]].
What is desired is [[being]] itself.
<blockquote>Desire is a relation of being to lack. The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It isn't the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists."<ref>{{S2}} p.223</ref></blockquote>
[[Lacan]] returns to this theme in 1958, when he argues that [[desire]] is the [[metonymy]] of the [[lack]] of [[being]] (''manque à être''; translated by Sheridan as "want-to-be").<ref>{{E}} p.259</ref>
The [[subject]]'s [[lack]] of [[being]] is "the heart of the analytic experience" and "the very field in which the neurotic's passion is deployed.<ref>{{E}} p.251</ref>
[[Lacan]] contrasts the [[lack]] of [[being]], which relates to [[desire]], with the [[lack]] of having (''manque à avoir''), which relates to [[demand]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.730</ref>
[[Image:Lacan-threelacks.jpg|center|Table of three types of lack of object]]
In 1956, [[lack]] comes to designate the [[lack]] of an [[object]].
[[Lacan]] distinguishes between three kinds of [[lack]], according to the nature of the [[object]] which is [[lack]]ing, as shown in the figure below.<ref>{{S4}} p.269</ref>
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Of these three forms of [[lack]], [[castration]] is the most important fromt he point of view of analytic experience, and the term "[[lack]]" tends to become synonymous with [[castration]].
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In 1957, when [[Lacan]] introduces the [[algebraic]] [[symbol]] for the [[bar]]red [[Other]] (<strike>A</strike>), [[lack]] comes to designate the [[lack]] of a [[signifier]] in the [[Other]].
[[Lacan]] introduces the [[symbol]] '''S(<strike>A</strike>)''' to designate "the signifier of a lack in the Other."
No matter how many [[signifier]]s one adds to the [[signifying chain]], the [[chain]] is always incomplete; it always [[lack]]s the [[signifier]] that oculd complete it.
This "missing signifier" (written -1 in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]]) is constitutive of the [[subject]].
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Subject]]
