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==Lack and Desire==
The term "[[lack]]" is always related, in [[Lacan]]'s teaching, to [[desire]].
However, the precise nature of what is [[lack]]ing varies over the course of [[Lacan]]'s [[Works of Jacques Lacan|work]].
When the term first appears, in 1955, [[lack]] designates first and foremost a [[lack|lack of being]]. What is desired [[desire]]d 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]] |lack of [[being]] (''[[lack|manque à être]]''; translated by Sheridan as "want-to-be").<ref>{{E}} p.259; translated by Sheridan as "want-to-be"</ref>
The [[subject]]'s [[lack]] |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]] |lack of [[being]], which relates to [[desire]], with the [[lack|lack of having]] of having (''[[lack|manque à avoir]]''), which relates to [[demand]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.730</ref>
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>
{| style="width:7585%; height:200px" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center"|+ '''[[:Image:Lacan-threelacks.jpg|Table of three types of lack of object]]'''<BR>
! align="center" | AGENT !! align="center" | LACK !! align="center" | OBJECT
|-
Of these three forms of [[lack]], [[castration]] is the most important from the point of view of [[treatment|analytic experience]], and the term "[[lack]]" tends to become synonymous with [[castration]].
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 [[lack|incomplete]]; it always [[lack]]s the [[signifier]] that oculd could complete it.
This "[[lack|missing signifier]]" (written ''-1 '' in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]]) is constitutive of the [[subject]]. [[Image:Lacan-threelacks.jpg|thumb|right|Table of three types of lack of object]]
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Algebra]]
* [[Desire]]
* [[Being]]
||
* [[Castration]]
* [[FrustrationObject]]
* [[Phallus]]
||
* [[Privation]]
* [[Signifier]]* [[Signifying chain]]{{Also}}
==References==
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:Dictionary]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Symbolic]]
[[Category:Imaginary]]
[[Category:Real]]
[[Category:Subject]]
[[Category:Desire]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Terms]]
