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sinthome
The term sinthome is, as Lacan points out, an archaic way of writing what has more recently been spelt symptÙme. Lacan introduces the term in 1975, as the title for the 1975-6 seminar, which is both a continuing elaboration of his topology, extending the previous seminar's focus on the BORROMEAN KNOT, and an exploration of the writings of James Joyce. Through this coincidentia oppositorum - bringing together mathematical theory and the intricate weave of the Joycean text - Lacan redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of his final topology of the subject.
1. Before the appearance of sinthome, divergent currents in Lacan's thinking lead to different inflections of the concept of the SYMPTOM. As early as 1957, the symptom is said to be 'inscribed in a writing process' (Ec, 445), which already implies a different view to that which regards the symptom as a ciphered message. In 1963 Lacan goes on to state that the symptom, unlike acting out, does not call for interpretation; in itself, it is not a call to the Other but a pure jouissance addressed to no one (Lacan, 1962-3: seminar of 23 January 1963; see Miller, 1987: 11). Such comments anticipate the radical transformation of Lacan's thought implicit in his shift from the linguistic definition of the symptom - as a signifier - to his statement, in the 1974-5 seminar, that 'the symptom can only be defined as the way in which each subject enjoys [jouit] the unconscious, in so far as the unconscious determines him' (Lacan, 1974-5: seminar of 18 February 1975).
