Changes

[[Lacan ]] states that in <i>Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety</i> (1926, S.E. XX) [[Freud ]] speaks of everything but [[anxiety ]] just "to leave the emptiness in which there is anxiety." This [[affect]], related to the [[structure ]] of the [[subject]], is not [[repressed ]] but adrift; only the signifiers [[signifier]]s that anchor it are [[repressed]]. For [[Lacan ]] [[anxiety]], <i>[[angoisse]]</i>, is not without an [[object]], but this [[object ]] is unknown. Since [[anxiety ]] is linked to [[desire]], and [[fantasy ]] is the support of [[desire]], the starting point is the <i>[[fantasme]]</i> elaborated in the [[Graph of Desire ]] in <i>[[Les formations de l'inconscient]]</i>: <img src="[[Image:lacansem1b1.gif" valign="bottom" height="11" width="12">|12px]]&lt;&gt;<i>a</i> ([[Subject barred ]] [[bar]]red by the [[signifier]]/relation to/<i>[[objet a]]</i>, which is the [[object of desire]], the [[imaginary ]] [[part-object]], an element imagined as separable from the rest of the [[body]]). He then proceeds to define <i>[[objet a]]</i> which relates [[anxiety ]] with [[desire]].<br>

<i>[[Objet a]]</i> is the cause of [[desire]], not its aim. On one hand, it is "the residue of division when the subject is marked by the 'unbroken line' of the signifier in the field of the Other." <i>[[Objet a]]</i> is different from the <i>a</i> of the mirror stage, it is not [[specular]]; neither is it "visible in what continues for the [[subject ]] the [[image ]] of his [[desire]]." It is what is lost during the original constitution of the [[subject ]] where the [[Father ]] is primary. If we consider the [[body]], <i>[[objet a]]</i> is not created by the [[separation ]] from the [[mother]], but from the [[separation ]] from the [[body ]] proper. <i>[[Objet a]]</i> is the placenta, <i>l'hommelette</i>, and even the breast tied to the [[subject ]] and detached from the [[mother]]. They are all objects of [[desire ]] for us, and there is no [[anxiety ]] for the [[woman]]. In a system centered on the [[signifier]], <i>[[objet a]]</i> seems to be the irreducible [[Real]], "a lack which the symbol does not fill in," a "real deprivation."<br>

On the other hand, [[anxiety ]] arises when [[lack ]] comes to be lacking. It is not nostalgia for the material breast, but the threat of its imminence. [[Lacan ]] uses Jone's analysis of the nightmare, "this being, the incubus, who weighs on our chest with his opaque weight of foreign <i>jouissance</i>," "who crushes the subject under his <i>jouissance</i>," and who is "a questioner." [[Anxiety]], like desire, is linked to the Other, to the <i>[[jouissance]]</i> and to the [[demand ]] of the [[Other]]. [[Lacan ]] links it to the terrible commandment of the [[Father]]-[[God]]: "<i>Jouis!</i>" For instance, what or whose apparition does for the sudden gap of an opening window (<i>The [[Wolf Man]]</i>)? An [[uncanny ]] strangeness or familiarity, it is the horror of the [[Thing ]] against which only desire and law combined are able to protect us. This takes place when the [[subject ]] loses the support of the [[lack ]] that allows him to constitute himself: - </font><font face="Symbol" size="3">F</font><font face="BOOKMAN" size="3"> (the [[phallus ]] as [[symbol ]] of [[lack]]). It is difficult to situate - </font><font face="Symbol" size="3">F</font><font face="BOOKMAN" size="3"> and <i>[[objet a]]</i> in their mutual rapport. The [[phallus ]] is sometimes the <i>agalma</i>, and sometimes an operating libidinal reserve that saves the subject from the fascination of the [[part object]]. Hence, the importance granted to [[symbolic ]] [[castration ]] in front of "the father's opaque and ungraspable desire," a [[castration ]] at the origin of the [[law]].<br>

[[Anxiety]], then, is an [[affect]], not an emotion; the only affect which is beyond all doubt and which is not deceptive. Whereas Freud distinguishes between [[fear ]] (focused on a specific object) and anxiety (which is not), [[Lacan ]] posits [[anxiety ]] as not without an object: it simply involves a different kind of [[object]], one that cannot be symbolized [[symbol]]ized as other objects are. This object is <i>[[objet a]]</i>, the object-cause-of-desire, and [[anxiety ]] arises when something fills the place of it, when the [[subject ]] is confronted by the [[desire ]] of the [[Other ]] and does not know what object he is for that [[desire]]. Also [[Lacan ]] links [[anxiety ]] to [[lack]]. All [[desire ]] springs from [[lack]], and [[anxiety ]] appears when this [[lack ]] is in itself lacking: "anxiety is the lack of a lack." [[Anxiety ]] is not the [[absence ]] of the breast, it is rather the possibility of its [[absence ]] which saves the [[subject ]] from [[anxiety]]. [[Acting out ]] and [[passage to the act ]] are last defenses [[defense]]s against [[anxiety<br>]]. And what happens in the [[cure]]? How can the [[analyst ]] measure how much [[anxiety ]] a [[patient ]] can bear? How may the [[analyst ]] deal with his own [[anxiety]]? The [[desire of the analyst ]] is here involved and he has to institute, along with [[anxiety]], the - <font face="Symbol" size="3">F</font>, an emptiness whose function is structural.