Changes

Borromean knot (noeud borromÈen) References to knots can be found in Lacan's work as early as the 1950s (e.g. E, 281), but it is not until the early 1970s that Lacan begins to examine knots from the point of view of their topological properties. The study of knot theory marks an important develop-  ment development in Lacan'S TOPOLOGY; from the study of surfaces (the moebius strip, the  torus, etc.) Lacan moves to the much more complex area of the topology of knots. Topology is increasingly seen as a radically non-metaphorical way of exploring the symbolic order and its interactions with the real and the imaginary; rather than simply representing structure, topology is that struc-  turestructure. In this late period of his work, one kind of knot comes to interest Lacan  more than any other: the Borromean knot.  The Borromean knot (shown in Figure 1), so called because the figure is found on the coat of arms of the Borromeo family, is a group of three rings  which are linked in such a way that if any one of them is severed, all three  become separated (S20, 112). Strictly speaking, it would be more appropriate  to refer to this figure as a chain rather than a knot, since it involves the interconnection of several different threads, whereas a knot is formed by a single thread. Although a minimum of three threads or rings are required to  form a Borromean chain, there is no maximum number; the chain may be  extended indefinitely by adding further rings, while still preserving its  Borromean quality (i.e. if any of the rings is cut, the whole chain falls apart).  Lacan first takes up the Borromean knot in the seminar of 1972-3, but his  most detailed discussion of the knot comes in the seminar of 1974-5. It is in  this seminar that Lacan uses the Borromean knot as, among other things, a way  of illustrating the interdependence of the three orders of the real, the symbolic  and the imaginary, as a way of exploring what it is that these three orders have in common. Each ring represents one of the three orders, and thus certain  elements can be located at intersections of these rings.  In the seminar of 1975-6, Lacan goes on to describe psychosis as the unravelling of the Borromean knot, and proposes that in some cases this is prevented by the addition of a fourth ring, the SINTHOME, which holds the other  three together.