Changes

Lacanintroduces<i>das Ding</i> in his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis

a</i> is seen as simply a later term for<i>das Ding</i>.

<i>das Ding</i>.</font></font><p><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font color="#000000">Conflating<i>dasDing</i> with the <i>objet petit a,</i> however, is problematic from the

has an "extimate" relation to<i>das Ding</i>, i.e., the object of desire/horror

no longer functions as the repository of our desire/horror.</font></font>

</p><p><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font color="#000000">Conversely,

<i>intimate</i>,and is characterized by the proliferation of unbarred Imaginary Others(A)

of metaphor, it can be<i>moved out</i> of the space of desire/horror via

metaphoric distance necessary for a distinct (delineated) sense of self. ==Definition==During the second phase of [[Lacan]]’s teaching the [[real]] loses the sense of ‘thingness’ which his earlier conception had retained. In his [[seminar]] on the [[ethics]] of [[psychoanalysis]], [[Lacan]] sought to clarify [[Freud]]’s [[definition]] of the [[unconscious]] and especially the question of what is [[repressed]]. For [[Freud]] there can be no [[unconscious]] without [[repression]], but what exactly is it that is [[[repressed]]: [[word]]s, [[image]]s, [[feeling]]s?For [[Lacan]], what is [[repressed]] is not [[image]]s, [[word]]s or [[emotion]]s but something much more fundamental. [[Freud]] hit upon this when, in ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]'', he suggested that there was a hard impenetrable core of the [[dream]] – what he called the ‘[[navel]]’ of the [[dream]] – that is [[beyond]] [[interpretation]]. What is [[repressed]], argues [[Lacan[[, is this hard impenetrable core. This is always a core of the [[real]] that is [[missing]] from the [[symbolic]] and all other [[representation]]s, [[image]]s and [[signifier]]s are no more than attempts to fill this [[gap]]. In [[seminar]] [[VII]] [[Lacan]] identified this [[repressed]] element as ‘’the representative of the representation’’, or ‘’[[dad Ding]]’’ (the [[Thing]]).  The [[thing]] is the [[beyond]] of the [[signified]] – that which is [[unknowable]] in itself. It is something [[beyond]] [[symbolization]], and therefore associated with the [[real]], or as [[Lacan]] puts it, “the [[thing]] in its dumb [[reality]].”</fontref>1992: 55</fontref>The [[thing]] is a [[lost]] [[object]] that must be continually refound. However, it is more importantly an ‘[[object]] that is nowhere articulated, it is a [[lost]] [[object]], but paradoxically an [[object]] that was never there in the first place to be [[lost]].”<ref>1992: 58<br/ref>&nbsp The [[thing]] is “the [[cause]] of the most fundamental [[human]] [[passion]]”;<brref>&nbsp;1992, 1986, 97</pref>it is the [[object]]-[[cause]] of [[desire]] and can only be constituted [[retrospective]]ly. The [[thing]] is ‘[[objective]]ly’ speaking ‘’no-thing’’; it is only something in relation to the [[desire]] that constitutes it.  After the [[seminar]] of 1959-60 the concept of ‘’das Ding’’ was replaced by the idea of the ‘’[[objet petit a]]’’. It is the [[desire]] of the [[subject]] fo fill the [[emptiness]] or [[void]] at the core of [[subjectivity]] and the [[symbolic]] that creates the [[Thing]], as opposed to the [[loss]] of some original [[thing]] creating the [[desire]] to find it.