Changes

The [[French]] term ''[[point de capiton]]'' is variously translated in [[English]] editions of [[Lacan]]'s work as "[[quilting point]]" or "[[anchoring point]]."

To avoid the confusion resulting from this variety of translation, the term has here been left in the original [[French]].

[[Lacan]] introduces the term in his 1955-6 [[seminar]] on [[the psychoses]] to account for the fact that despite the continual [[slip]]page of the [[signified]] under the [[signifier]], thereare nevertheless in the normal ([[neurotic]]) [[subject]] certain fundamental "attachment points" between the [[signified]] and the [[signifier]] where this [[slip]]page is temporarily halted.

This helps to explain how it is that in the [[psychotic]] experience, "the signifier and the signified present themselves in a completely divided form."<ref>{{S3}} p.268</ref>.

The ''[[point de capiton]]'' is thus the point in the [[signifying chain]] at which "the signifier stops the otherwise endless movement of the signification" and produces the necessary [[illusion]] of a fixed [[meaning]].<ref>{{E}} p.303</ref>

Since the [[signifying chain]] has both a [[diachronic]] and a [[synchronic]] dimension, so also does the ''[[point de capiton]]'':

It is only when the sentence is completed that the sense of the first words is determined [[retroactively]].

===Synchrony===

<blockquote>"The [[synchronic]] [[structure]] (of the ''[[point de capiton]]'') is more hidden, and it is this [[structure]] that takes us to the source. It is [[metaphor]]."<ref>{{E}} p.303</ref></blockquote>

[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]

[[Category:Dictionary]]