Seminar VII
The Seminar, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Le Séminaire, Livre VII : L'éthique de la psychanalyse) is the seventh annual seminar delivered by Jacques Lacan during the academic year 1959–1960. It occupies a central place in Lacan’s teaching, articulating a distinctive conception of ethics grounded not in norms, ideals, or goods, but in the relation of the subject to desire.[1]
| L'éthique de la psychanalyse | |
|---|---|
| Seminar VII | |
 Cover of the French edition of Le Séminaire, Livre VII | |
| French Title | Le Séminaire, Livre VII : L’éthique de la psychanalyse |
| English Title | The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis |
| Seminar Information | |
| Seminar Date(s) | 18 November 1959 – 6 July 1960 |
| Session Count | 28 sessions |
| Location | Hôpital Sainte-Anne, Paris |
| Psychoanalytic Content | |
| Key Concepts | Ethics of psychoanalysis • Desire • Jouissance • das Ding (the Thing) • Superego • Sublimation • Law • Guilt • Pleasure principle • Death drive • Real • Symbolic • Law • Castration • Antigone • Courtly love |
| Notable Themes | Psychoanalysis as an ethics of desire; critique of adaptationist “good”; enjoyment and the limits of pleasure; the Thing and the Real; sublimation and cultural forms; tragedy and the “between-two-deaths”; reassessing Freud on morality, guilt, and civilization; law and transgression; critique of moral philosophy |
| Freud Texts | Civilization and Its Discontents • Beyond the Pleasure Principle • Totem and Taboo |
| Theoretical Context | |
| Period | Middle period; Early/structural period (transition toward explicit ethics and the Real) |
| Register | Symbolic with intensified articulation of the Real and jouissance |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Seminar VI |
| Followed by | Seminar VIII |
Seminar VII is widely regarded as one of Lacan’s most philosophically ambitious and culturally influential seminars. Drawing on Sigmund Freud, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Greek tragedy—most notably Sophocles’ 'Antigone*—Lacan proposes that psychoanalysis entails its own ethics, irreducible to moral philosophy and irreconcilable with projects of normalization or happiness. The seminar introduces or consolidates several of Lacan’s most enduring concepts, including the famous maxim that “the only thing of which one can be guilty is having given ground relative to one’s desire,” and the central notion of 'das Ding'(“the Thing”) as the impossible object at the heart of ethical experience.[1]
Introductory overview
Seminar VII marks a decisive shift in Lacan’s teaching from questions of technique and structural diagnosis toward the explicit articulation of an ethics of psychoanalysis. Rather than asking how analysis should be conducted or how symptoms are structured, Lacan asks what psychoanalysis ultimately commits the analyst and analysand to, and how analytic practice is to be oriented in relation to law, pleasure, suffering, and jouissance.[2]
Lacan’s answer is deliberately austere. Psychoanalysis, he argues, does not aim at adaptation, harmony, or the realization of socially sanctioned goods. Its ethical axis is instead defined by desire as such—desire insofar as it exceeds pleasure, utility, and moral calculation. This reorientation places psychoanalysis in tension with both traditional moral philosophy and post-Freudian ego psychology, which Lacan criticizes for promoting ideals of health, maturity, and adjustment at the expense of the subject’s truth.[3]
Historical and institutional context
Lacan’s teaching in the late 1950s
Seminar VII was delivered during a period of consolidation and expansion in Lacan’s influence. By the end of the 1950s, his “return to Freud” had gained international attention, and his seminars at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne attracted clinicians, philosophers, writers, and students from a wide range of disciplines.[4]
The seminar follows closely on Seminar VI (*Le désir et son interprétation*), where Lacan had deepened his analysis of desire and fantasy. Seminar VII radicalizes these concerns by situating desire at the core of ethical thought, explicitly confronting the philosophical tradition and questioning the compatibility of psychoanalysis with established moral frameworks.
Dialogue with Freud
Throughout Seminar VII, Lacan maintains a sustained dialogue with Freud’s cultural and metapsychological writings, especially Civilization and Its Discontents and Beyond the Pleasure Principle.[5] Freud’s account of the conflict between drives and civilization, and his introduction of the death drive, provide Lacan with a crucial backdrop for rethinking ethics beyond pleasure and social utility.
Lacan argues that Freud’s work already implies an ethics irreducible to moral norms: an ethics oriented toward the subject’s relation to its own desire and to the limits imposed by civilization and law. Seminar VII can thus be read as an attempt to make explicit the ethical consequences of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious.[1]
Conceptual framework and methodology
Ethics versus morality
A fundamental distinction in Seminar VII is that between ethics and morality. Lacan reserves “morality” for systems of norms, ideals, and prescriptions oriented toward the Good, happiness, or social harmony. Ethics, by contrast, concerns the subject’s position with respect to desire and the consequences of acting—or failing to act—in accordance with it.
This distinction allows Lacan to challenge the assumption that psychoanalysis should promote well-being or moral improvement. For Lacan, such goals risk obscuring the ethical dimension of analysis, which lies in confronting the subject with the truth of its desire, however disturbing or socially unacceptable that truth may be.[1]
The role of tragedy
Methodologically, Seminar VII is notable for its sustained engagement with tragedy, particularly Greek tragedy. Lacan treats tragedy not as a moral lesson but as a privileged site where the ethical dimension of desire appears in its most radical form. Tragic figures, unlike moral exemplars, do not embody virtues or goods; they incarnate a position of fidelity to desire that often entails destruction and loss.
This focus on tragedy culminates in Lacan’s extended reading of 'Antigone*, which he presents as the paradigmatic figure of ethical action in psychoanalysis.[6]
Key themes, concepts, and case studies
Desire and guilt
One of the seminar’s most frequently cited formulations is Lacan’s claim that “the only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one’s desire.”[1] This statement redefines guilt not as the transgression of moral law but as the betrayal of desire.
In this framework, guilt arises when the subject compromises its desire in the name of comfort, conformity, or moral ideals. Psychoanalysis, therefore, does not aim to alleviate guilt by reassuring the subject of its innocence; it aims to locate guilt precisely at the point where desire has been renounced.
The Good and the critique of moral philosophy
Lacan offers a sustained critique of the philosophical tradition of the Good, from Aristotle’s teleological ethics to Kant’s moral law. He argues that the Good functions as an obstacle to desire, encouraging the subject to sacrifice its desire for the sake of socially sanctioned ends.
Against this tradition, Lacan insists that there is no supreme Good capable of guaranteeing ethical action. Ethics begins, rather, where the subject encounters the limit of the Good and is forced to decide in relation to desire without external guarantees.[7]
Das Ding (the Thing)
Perhaps the most influential concept elaborated in Seminar VII is 'das Ding'(“the Thing”). Drawing on Freud’s distinction between 'thing-presentations'and 'word-presentations*, Lacan defines the Thing as a primordial, lost object that lies at the center of the subject’s psychic economy but remains outside symbolization.
The Thing is associated with the Real, with the forbidden object of incest, and with a lethal form of jouissance that both attracts and repels the subject. It is not an object among others, but the impossible object around which desire is structured. Ethical experience, for Lacan, is defined by the subject’s relation to this impossible object.[1]
Jouissance and the limit of pleasure
Seminar VII plays a crucial role in Lacan’s elaboration of jouissance. Unlike pleasure, which is regulated by the pleasure principle, jouissance names a paradoxical satisfaction that entails pain, excess, and transgression. Jouissance is linked to the Thing and to the point where pleasure turns into suffering.
Lacan uses this concept to challenge hedonistic ethics and to argue that ethical action cannot be reduced to the maximization of pleasure or well-being. Jouissance marks the limit beyond which ethical decisions acquire their tragic dimension.[3]
Antigone as ethical paradigm
Lacan’s reading of 'Antigone'is the centerpiece of Seminar VII. He presents Antigone as a figure who does not “give ground” on her desire, even at the cost of her life. Her act—burying her brother Polynices in defiance of Creon’s law—exemplifies an absolute fidelity to desire that places her beyond the domain of the Good and the socially intelligible.
Lacan situates Antigone in what he calls the “between-two-deaths” (entre-deux-morts), a space between biological death and symbolic death where desire shines with a terrifying purity. Antigone’s beauty, for Lacan, is not moral but ethical: it reveals the power and danger of desire when it is pursued without compromise.[1][6]
Theoretical significance and clinical implications
The analyst’s ethical position
Seminar VII has far-reaching implications for analytic practice. Lacan insists that the analyst must not occupy the position of moral guide or dispenser of goods. The analyst’s ethical position is defined by a refusal to tell the analysand what is good for them and by a commitment to sustaining the question of desire.
This stance sharply distinguishes Lacanian psychoanalysis from therapeutic models oriented toward adaptation, normalization, or happiness. The analyst’s responsibility is not to promise well-being but to support the analysand’s confrontation with the truth of their desire and the consequences of that confrontation.[8]
Sublimation and creation
Lacan redefines sublimation in Seminar VII as the elevation of an object to the dignity of the Thing. Sublimation is not a moral compromise or a socially acceptable outlet for drives; it is a creative act that reorganizes the subject’s relation to the Thing and to jouissance.
This account of sublimation allows Lacan to link psychoanalysis with art, culture, and invention, suggesting that ethical action may take creative forms that transform, rather than suppress, the subject’s relation to desire.[1]
Reception and legacy
Influence within psychoanalysis
Within Lacanian psychoanalysis, Seminar VII is considered a foundational text on ethics and is frequently cited in discussions of analytic technique, training, and the end of analysis. Its emphasis on desire and on the analyst’s ethical responsibility has shaped debates about neutrality, interpretation, and the goals of treatment.
Later Lacanian developments—such as Lacan’s theories of discourse and his late work on the sinthome—can be read as extending and complicating the ethical framework established in Seminar VII.
Impact beyond psychoanalysis
Seminar VII has had a substantial impact beyond clinical psychoanalysis, particularly in philosophy, literary theory, and political theory. Lacan’s reading of Antigone has been widely discussed and contested, influencing thinkers concerned with ethics, law, and transgression.
Philosophers such as Alenka Zupančič and Slavoj Žižek have drawn extensively on Seminar VII to develop accounts of ethics centered on the Real and on acts that disrupt normative frameworks.[7] The seminar thus occupies a key place in the broader reception of Lacan as a thinker of ethics and subjectivity.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre VII : L’éthique de la psychanalyse (1959–1960). Text established by Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986; English trans. Dennis Porter, New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
- ↑ Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
- ↑ Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. Trans. Barbara Bray. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
- ↑ Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. SE XXI.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Sophocles. Antigone. Various translations.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Zupančič, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. London: Verso, 2000.
- ↑ Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Further reading
- Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Dennis Porter. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
- Zupančič, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. London: Verso, 2000.
- Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
- Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
- Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996.