Factor C

factor c ( facteur c) Lacan coined the term 'factor c' at a psychiatric

   congress in 1950. Factor c is 'the constant characteristic of any given cultural

   milieu' (E, 37): it is an attempt to designate that part of the symbolic order

   which marks the particular features of one culture as opposed to another (c

   stands for culture). Although it would be interesting to speculate               on the

   possible applications of this concept to the interrelationship between different

   cultural milieux and psychoanalysis, Lacan only gives one example of the c

   factor; ahistoricism, he argues, is the c factor of the culture of the United States

   (see E, 37 and E, l15). The 'American way of life' revolves around such

   signifiers as 'happiness', 'adaptation', 'human relations' and 'human engineer-

   ing' (E, 38). Lacan regards the c factor of United States culture as particularly

   antithetical to psychoanalysis, and sees it as largely responsible for the errors

   which have beset psychoanalytic theory in the USA (such aS EGO-PSYCHOLOGY).