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{{Top}}enjoyment|jouissance{{Bottom}}
=====Translation=====
The [[French]] word ''[[jouissance]]'' means basically "[[enjoyment]]", but it has a sexual connotation (i.e. "orgasm") lacking in the English word, and is therefore left untranslated in most English editions of [[Lacan]].
As Jane Gallop observes, whereas orgasm is a countable noun, the term ''[[jouissance]]'' is always used in the singular by [[Lacan]] and is always preceded by a definite article.<ref>Gallop, Jane. ''Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter's Seduction'', London: Macmillan, 1982.</ref>
==Edit===Jacques Lacan=====
The term does not appear in [[Lacan]]'s work until 1953, but even then it is not particularly salient.<ref>{{E}} p. 42, 87</ref>
=====Master and Slave=====In the [[seminars ]] of 1953-4 and 1954-5 [[Lacan]] uses the term occasionally, usually in the context of the [[Hegel]]ian [[dialectic]] of the [[master]] and the [[slave]]: the [[slave]] is forced to work to provide objects for the [[master]]'s [[enjoyment]] (''[[jouissance]]'').<ref>{{S1}} p. 223; {{S2}} p. 269</ref>
=====Enjoyment=====Upt to 1957, then, the term seems to mean no more than the [[enjoyment|enjoyable sensation ]] that accompanies the [[satisfaction]] of a [[biological]] [[need]] such as hunger.<ref>{{S4}} p. 125</ref>
=====Sexual Connotations=====Soon after, the sexual connotations become more apparent; in 1957, [[Lacan]] uses the term to refer to the [[enjoyment ]] of a [[sexuality|sexual ]] [[object]],<ref>{{Ec}} p.453</ref> and to the [[pleasure]]s of masturbation.<ref>{{S4}} p.241</ref>, and in 1958 he makes explicit sense of ''[[jouissance]]'' as orgasm.<ref>{{Ec}} p. 727</ref>
==Edit===''Jouissance'' and Pleasure=====It is only in 1960 that [[Lacan]] develops his classic opposition between ''[[jouissance]]'' and [[pleasure]], an opposition which alludes to the [[Hegel]]ian/[[Kojève|Kojevian]] distinciton distinction between ''Genuß'' ([[enjoyment]]) and ''List'' ([[pleasure]]).
=====Pleasure Principle=====The [[pleasure principle]] functions as a limit to [[enjoyment]]; it is a [[law whihc ]] which commands the [[subject]] to "enjoy as little as possible."
At the same time, the [[subject]] constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his [[enjoyment]], to go "beyond the pleasure principle."
=====Transgression=====However, the result of transgressing the [[pleasure principle ]] is not more [[pleasure]], but pain, since there is only a certain amount of [[pleasure ]] that the [[subject ]] can bear.
Beyond this limit, [[pleasure ]] becomes [[pain]], and this "painful pleasure" is what [[Lacan]] calls ''[[jouissance]]''.
<blockquote>"''Jouissance'' is suffering."<ref>{{S7}} p.184</ref></blockquote>
=====Symptom=====The term ''[[jouissance]]'' thus nicely expresses the paradoxical [[satisfaction ]] that the [[subject ]] derives from his [[symptom]], or, to put it another way, the suffering that he derives from his on [[satisfaction]].
==Edit===Prohibition=====
The prohibition of ''[[jouissance]]'' (the [[pleasure principle]]) is inherent in the [[symbolic]] [[structure]] of [[language]], which is why "''jouissance'' is forbidden to him who speaks, as such."<ref>{{E}} p. 319</ref>
The very prohibiton creates the [[desire]] to transgress it, and ''[[jouissance]]'' is therefore fundamentally transgressive.<ref>{{S7}} ch.15</ref>
==Edit===Death Drive=====
The [[death drive]] is the name given to that constant [[desire]] in the [[subject]] to break through the [[pleasure principle]] towards the [[Thing]] and a certain excess ''[[jouissance]]''; thus ''[[jouissance]]''is "the path towards death."<ref>{{S17}} p. 17</ref>
Insofar as the [[drive]]s are attempts to break through the [[pleasure principle]] in search of ''[[jouissance]]'', every [[drive]] is a [[death drive]].
==Edit===''Jouissance'' and Libido=====
There are strong affinitites between [[Lacan]]'s concept of ''[[jouissance]]'' and [[Freud]]'s concept of the [[libido]], as is clear from [[Lacan]]'s description of ''[[jouissance]]'' as a "bodily substance."<ref>{{S20}} p. 26</ref>
