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The French word ''[[jouissance]]'' means basically "[[enjoyment]]", but it has a sexual connotation (i.e. 'orgasm') lacking in the English word "[[enjoyment", and is therefore left untranslated in most English editions of [[Lacan]].
It is only in 1960 that [[Lacan]] develops his classic opposition between ''jouissance'' and pleasure,
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The prohibition of ''[[jouissance]]'' (the pleasure principle) is inherent in the [[symbolic]] [[structure]] of [[languagge]], which is why "''jouissance is forbidden to him who speaks, as such."<ref>{{E}} p.319</ref>
The [[subject]]'s entry into the [[symbolic]] is conditional upon a certain initial renunciation of ''[[jouissance]]'' in the [[castration complex]], when the [[subject]] gives up his attempts to be the [[imaginary]] [[phallus]] for the [[mother]].
<blockquote>"Castration means that ''jouissance'' musst be refused so that it can be reached on the inverted ladder (''l'échelle renversée'') of the Law of desire."<ref>{{E}} p.324.</blockquote>
The symbolic prohibition of enjoyment in the OEdipus complex (the incest taboo) is thus, paradoxically, the prohibiton of something which is already impossible; its function is therefore to sustain the neurotic illusion that enjoyment would be attainable if it were not forbidden.
The very prohibiton creates the desire to transgress it, and ''jouissance'' is therefore fundamentally transgressive.<Ref>{{S7}} ch.15</ref>
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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 drives are attempts to break through the pleasure principle in search of ''jouissance'', every drive is a death drive.
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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>
In keeping with Freud's assertion taht there is only one libido, which is masculine, Lacan states that jouissance is essentially phallic.
