Extimacy
Jacques Lacan
Translation
Lacan coins the term extimité by applying the prefix ex -- from exterieur, "exterior" -- to the Freud word intimité -- "intimacy".
"Inside" and "Outside"
The resulting neologism, which may be rendered "extimacy in English, neatly expresses the way in which psychoanalysis problematizes the opposition between "inside" and "outside".ref>Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p.139</ref>
Examples
For example, the real is just as much inside as outside.
The unconscious is not a purely interior psychic system but an intersubjective structure -- "the unconscious is outside".
Subject as Ex-centric
Again, the Other is "something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me."[1]
Furthermore, the center of the subject is outside; the subject is ex-centric.[2]
Topological Structure of Extimacy
The structure of extimacy is perfectly expressed in the topology of the torus and of the moebius strip.
See Also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p.71
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.165, 171
