Barred Subject
The Barred Subject (French: le sujet barré, symbolized as $S) is a central concept in Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. It designates the human subject as structurally divided, alienated, and constituted through lack. The bar (la barre) over the S (for sujet, or subject) marks a fundamental split within the subject—between the speaking being (parlêtre) and the unconscious forces that organize desire and identity.
Origins and Structural Significance
Emerging from Lacan’s structuralist re-reading of Sigmund Freud, the barred subject replaces the notion of a coherent ego with a decentered, fragmented subject. While Freud posited the unconscious as dynamic and repressed, Lacan formalized it as structured like a language. Entry into the Symbolic order—the realm of language, law, and intersubjectivity—constitutes the subject through a necessary loss and alienation.
The bar over the subject thus signals a permanent division:
- Between the conscious subject of speech (ego, “I”) and the unconscious subject structured by the signifier.
- Between what the subject says and what the unconscious means.
The subject becomes a point within a network of signifiers, never coinciding fully with itself.
The Subject and the Signifier
Lacan articulates the logic of the subject in his famous formula:
"The subject is that which a signifier represents for another signifier." (Lacan, Écrits)
In this schema, the subject is not a stable self but the effect of signification. It emerges only through displacement and substitution within the chain of signifiers. The bar over $S denotes that the subject is unable to fully articulate or grasp itself; it is constituted by an irreducible lack.
Alienation and Separation
Lacan describes the formation of the barred subject through two primary operations:
- Alienation: To become a speaking subject, one must be alienated in the signifier, losing immediate access to being.
- Separation: The subject confronts the desire of the Other, encountering an enigmatic lack that fuels the subject’s own desire.
This dialectic makes the subject fundamentally unconscious, unknowable to itself, and defined by its relation to the Other’s desire.
Barred Subject and Castration
The barred subject is structurally linked to the Castrated Subject. Both terms express the impossibility of wholeness and the subject’s constitution through loss. Castration refers more explicitly to the renunciation of jouissance and the acceptance of the Name-of-the-Father and symbolic law. The barred subject emphasizes the division caused by language itself—the impossibility of coinciding with oneself or with meaning.
Fantasy, Desire, and Objet Petit a
The subject’s division is also expressed in its relation to the object cause of desire, or objet petit a. In Lacan’s matheme of fantasy, the structure $S ◊ a represents the barred subject in relation to the lost object that sustains its desire.
This fantasy structure supports the subject's sense of coherence while masking its constitutive lack. The pursuit of a is a pursuit of what was lost in the passage into the symbolic.
The Real and the Limits of the Symbolic
The barred subject is periodically confronted with the Real—that which resists symbolization. Encounters with the Real (e.g., trauma, psychosis, jouissance) expose the limits of language and the subject's symbolic coordinates. In such moments, the division of the subject is laid bare, and the supporting fantasy may collapse.
Clinical Relevance
In psychoanalytic practice, the barred subject accounts for the subject’s symptoms, fantasies, and position in discourse. The analyst does not aim to restore a unified self, but rather to facilitate the subject’s assumption of its lack—enabling speech from the place of division.
Different clinical structures respond to this division differently:
- Neurotics repress it, resulting in symptoms and unconscious conflict.
- Perverts disavow it, staging scenarios to challenge symbolic limits.
- Psychotics foreclose the symbolic, leading to disturbances in the symbolic field and failures in subjective division.
Mathemes and Theoretical Constructs
Lacan introduced mathemes to formalize these concepts:
- $S — The barred subject
- a — Objet petit a, the cause of desire
- S1 — The master signifier
- S2 — The chain of knowledge (signifiers)
- $S ◊ a — The fundamental fantasy structure
These structures formalize the split nature of the subject and its position relative to language, desire, and the Other.
Philosophical and Cultural Impact
The barred subject has become central in post-structuralist philosophy, critical theory, and feminist thought. It challenges Cartesian and humanist models of the self, emphasizing decentering, lack, and the mediation of desire through symbolic structures.
Thinkers like Slavoj Žižek, Judith Butler, and Alain Badiou have extended the concept to explore ideology, identity, and ethics.
See Also
References
- Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 1977.
- Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1978.
- Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1981.
- Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton University Press, 1995.
- Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1996.