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{| align=====Translation=====The "[[Frenchright]] term ''" style="line-height:2.0em;text-align:right;margin-left: 10px;background-color:#fcfcfc;border:1px solid #aaa" | [[point de capitonFrench]]'' is variously translated in [[English]] editions of [[Lacan]]'s work as ": [[quilting point]]" or "[[anchoring |point]]." de capiton{{Bottom}}

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]].

It literally designates an [[upholstery button]], the analogy [[being ]] that just as [[upholstery button]]s are places where "the mattress-maker's needle has worked hard to prevent a shapeless mass of stuffing from moving too freely [[about]].<ref>Bowie, Malcolm. (1991) ''Lacan'', [[London]]: Fontana. p.74</ref>," so the ''[[points de capiton]]'' are points at which the "signified and signifier are knotted together."<ref>{{S3}} p.268</ref>

[[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]], there are nevertheless in the normal ([[neurotic]]) [[subject]] certain fundamental "attachment points" between the [[signified]] and the [[signifier]] where this [[slip]]page is temporarily halted.   A certain minimum [[number ]] of these points are "necessary for a person to be called normal," and "when they are not established, or when they give way'" the result is [[psychosis]].<ref>{{S3}} ppp.268-9</ref> 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]]'':

[[Image:PointdeCapitonGRAPHOFDESIRE-ONE.gifjpg|thumb|275px|right|[[graph of desire|The elementary cell]]]]The [[diachronic]] dimension of the ''[[point de capiton]]'' lies in the fact that [[communication]] is always a [[retroactive]] effect of [[punctuation]].   It is only when the [[sentence ]] is completed that the [[sense ]] of the first [[words ]] is determined [[retroactively]].   This function is illustrated in the [[graph of desire|elementary cell]] of the [[graph of desire]], in which the ''[[point de capiton]]'' is the leftmost point of intersection between the vector '''S - S'''' and the vector [[Image:ASRIGHT.jpg|20px]].