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The [[L and R schemas ]] are two of [[Lacan]]'s didactic [[diagrams]]; they articulate the [[dual ]] relation, between the [[imaginary ]] (which is dualistic) and the [[symbolic]], (which adds a [[third ]] element).

[[Human ]] beings are at first [[captured ]] in [[the symbolic ]] [[order ]] before they are aware of it. They enter into it, through the parades of [[speech]], as in the fort/da [[game ]] that [[Freud ]] described in Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] [[Principle ]] (1920g).[[Schema L ]] developed out of Lacan's study of Poe's story "The Purloined [[Letter]]" in his [[seminar ]] of 1954-55. It depicts the "relation" of the [[subject ]] with the absolute [[Other]]. As the arrows in the schema indicate, it is from the Other (i.e., the [[unconscious]], the "treasure trove of [[signifiers]]") that a [[message ]] reaches the subject in an inverted [[form]]. This message makes the subject "fade" when it is received ([[Figure ]] 1).

In other [[words]], the "relation" of the unconscious subject to the Other—that is, the relation the subject has with his or her own unconscious—is precarious and uncertain. In fact, it is always mediated by the subject's ego, which, according to Lacan's [[theory ]] of the [[mirror ]] [[stage]], is based on the [[image ]] of [[another]]. Thus, if we ignore the direction of the arrows, [[communication ]] between S and A can only follow a trajectory that moves from other people—that is, the "small other"—to the subject's ego, that is, from the [[specular ]] image to one's [[body ]] image. These two are trapped in a [[Hegelian ]] [[dialectic]].

In "On a Question Prior to Any Possible [[Treatment ]] of [[Psychosis]]" (1959), Lacan produced [[schema R]], which extended and completed schema L. A [[distortion ]] of schema R then produced schema I, which represents psychosis. And it is schema R in the form of a diamond that gives us the [[formula ]] of [[fantasy]]: S̷ ◇ a (Figure 2).

This quadrangular schema represents the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex ]] in two different aspects, imaginary and symbolic. The square includes on the one hand [[the imaginary ]] [[triangle ]] [[mother]]-[[child]]-[[phallus]], and on the other hand the symbolic triangle that [[structures ]] the [[oedipal ]] trio of [[father]]-mother-child.

The [[real ]] is located between these two triangles. It is represented as a Moebius [[strip ]] that simultaneously separates and unites the imaginary and the symbolic.

The relations of the [[terms ]] on the [[outside ]] of the square (M, mother; P, père, father; I, ego-[[ideal]]; φ , phallus) along with those from schema L placed on the [[inside ]] of the schema (S, a, a′, A) are in the [[register ]] of [[identification]]. This is how "The third term of the imaginary ternary [mother-child-phallus]—the one where the subject is [[identified]], on the contrary, with his [[living ]] being—is [[nothing ]] but the [[phallic ]] image, whose unveiling in this function is not the least scandalous facet of the [[Freudian ]] discovery" (Lacan, 2002, pp. 186-87).

The real in the center of the schema is in fact a [[Moebius strip]], the edges of which are rejoined when the strip is cut out and twisted so that points Mm and Ii meet. This strip only sustains itself by extracting of [[object ]] a: "It is thus as [[representation]]'s [[representative ]] in fantasy—that is, as the originally [[repressed ]] subject—that S̷, the [[barred ]] S of [[desire]], props up the field of [[reality ]] here; and this field is sustained only by the extraction of [[object a]], which nevertheless gives it its [[frame]]" (Lacan, p. 213, n. 14).

"[This] symbolizes . . . that the [[[psychotic]]'s] relation to the other qua relation to one's [[semblable ]] . . . [is] perfectly compatible with the skewing of the relation to the Other with a [[capital ]] O" (Lacan, p. 204).

See also: Four [[discourses]]; [[Graph ]] of Desire; [[Matheme]]; [[Optical ]] schema; [[Subject of the unconscious]]; Subject's [[castration]]; [[Topology]].[[Bibliography]]