Extimacy

extimacy (extimitÈ) Lacan coins the term extimitÈ by applying the prefix ex (from exterieur, 'exterior') to the French word intimitÈ ('intimacy'). The resulting neologism, which may be rendered 'extimacy' in English, neatly expresses the way in which psychoanalysis problematises the opposition between inside and outside, between container and contained (see S7, 139). For example, the real is just as much inside as outside, and the unconscious is not a purely interior psychic system but an intersubjective structure ('the unconscious is outside'). Again, the Other is 'something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me' (S7, 71). Furthermore, the centre of the subject is outside; the subject is ex-centric (see E, 165, 171). The structure of extimacy is perfectly expressed in the topology of the TORUs and of the MOEBIUS STRIP. The concept of extimacy has been further developed by Jacques-Alain Miller in his seminar of 1985-6 (see the summary of this seminar and other related articles in Bracher et al., 1994).