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Lacan first takes up the Borromean knot in the seminar of 1972-3, but his most detailed discussion of the knot comes in the seminar of 1974-5. It is in this seminar that Lacan uses the Borromean knot as, among other things, a way of illustrating the interdependence of the three orders of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, as a way of exploring what it is that these three orders have in common. Each ring represents one of the three orders, and thus certain elements can be located at intersections of these rings.

In the seminar of 1975-6, Lacan goes on to describe psychosis as the unravelling of the Borromean knot, and proposes that in some cases this is prevented by the addition of a fourth ring, the SINTHOME, which holds the other three together.

== References ==