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Symbolic

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==Dictionary==
For Jacques Lacan, the symbolic ([[French]]:''symbolique''), or the symbolic order, is a universal structure encompassing the entire field of human action and existence. It involves the function of speech and language, and more precisely that of the signifier. It appears as an essentially unconscious, latent apparatus.
The idea of the symbolic is contemporaneous with the birth of psychoanalysis since the traces linked to repressed infantile sexual experiences are symbolically reactualized in adulthood as defensive symptoms. The fact that Freud emphasized memory and reminiscence in his earliest theoretical work is enough to indicate the primacy of symbolic traces in psychopathology. The Oedipus complex, the avatars of the primal relationship with the mother, and the function of the dead father all take on their importance because they function on the same axis where the signifier emerges as the mainspring of the symbolic. As Lacan wrote in the "Function and Field" essay, "Freud's discovery was that of the field of effects, in man's nature, of his relations to the symbolic order" (2002, p. 63). Further, Lacan's entire body of work testifies to the fact that he was trying to restore the symbolic to its full status in psychoanalysis.
 
The impact of the symbolic is felt on several levels: first in limits placed on social alliances and relationships by a certain number of mechanisms, for which the traditional model is the pact. At another level, the symbolic intervenes in the form of discrete elements, namely signifiers, that are overdetermined as the prevalent forms of the imaginary, affective relations, and the choice of sexual objects.
 
Lacan repeatedly referred to the canonical example of the "child with the reel" from Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920g) in order to emphasize that the mark of the absence of the beloved object is realized by the fort-da game of phonetic opposition that represented the appearance and disappearance of the mother. This correlation between the missing object and a symbolic signifying mark inscribed in language removes the object's concrete features and grants it a level of conceptual force.
 
The emergence of the signifier in the symbolic is best shown by the infant's initiation into the dialectical field of demand and desire, for it is in the experience of vital distress and the appeal to a caretaker that a split occurs. Even if this caretaker satisfies a vital need, there is still a gaping lack of being. This equivocal division is brought about by the signifier of the first demand. It brings with it consequences beyond the frontiers of infancy and perpetuates a radical division in subjectivity. It also grants to the unconscious Other its symbolic place because the ultimate meaning of this signifier is assumed by the subject to reside in this other scene.
 
In the demand, the inexpressible, originally repressed part of the signifier becomes the cause of desire by the process of repetition. Later, the Oedipus complex normalizes the structure by assigning a definitive meaning to a lack previously put in place—namely that the mother, as primordial Other, is assumed to possess the phallus, and the father, by prohibiting incest, reinforces the fact that the phallus is absent by conferring on it a symbolic function. Thus the father's prohibition makes the phallic signifier cause desire in the very place where repression had left a hole. From that point on, this operation links the lack (symbolic castration) to the law of language, in order to make it reappear as symbolic debt. The symbolic order is thus constituted as an autonomous system of signifiers, a system that is governed from the Other and to which the subject is subjugated. The primary character of the symbolic led Lacan to conceive of it as one of the dimensions constituting the Borro-mean knot, a formalized structural schema that also includes the imaginary and the real.
 
 
==Definition==
The term 'symbolic' appears in adjectival form in Lacan's earliest psychoanalytic writings.<ref> (e.g. Lacan, 1936)</ref> In these early works the term implies references to symbolic logic and to the equations used in mathematical physics.<ref> (Ec, 79)<.ref> In 1948 symptoms are said to have a 'symbolic meaning'.<ref>(E, 10)</ref> By 1950, the term has acquired anthropological overtones, as when Lacan praises Marcel Mauss for having shown that 'the structures of society are symbolic'.<ref>(Ec, 132)</ref>
 
These different nuances are combined into a single category in 1953 when Lacan begins to use the term 'symbolic' as a noun. It now becomes one of the three [[orders]] that remain central throughout the rest of Lacan's work. Of these three orders, the symbolic is the most crucial one for psychoanalysis; psychoanalysts are essentially 'practitioners of the symbolic function'.<ref> (E, 72)</ref> In speaking of 'the symbolic function', Lacan makes it clear that his concept of the symbolic order owes much to the anthropological work of Claude LÈvi-Strauss (from whom the phrase 'symbolic function' is taken).<ref> see LÈvi-Strauss, 1949a: 203</ref> In particular, Lacan takes from LÈvi-Strauss the idea that the social world is structured by certain laws which regulate kinship relations and the exchange of gifts.<ref>(see also Mauss, 1923)</ref> The concept of the gift, and that of a circuit of exchange, are thus fundamental to Lacan's concept of the symbolic. <ref>(S4, 153-4, 182)</ref>
 
Since the most basic form of exchange is communication itself (the exchange of words, the gift of speech);<ref> S4, 189</ref> and since the concepts of [[law]] and of [[structure]] are unthinkable without [[language]], the symbolic is essentially a linguistic dimension. Any aspect of the psychoanalytic experience which has a linguistic structure thus pertains to the symbolic order.
 
However, Lacan does not simply equate the symbolic order with language.
On the contrary, language involves imaginary and real dimensions in addition to its symbolic dimension. The symbolic dimension of language is that of the [[signifier]]; a dimension in which elements have no positive existence but which are constituted purely by virtue of their mutual differences.
 
The symbolic is also the realm of radical alterity which Lacan refers to as the [[Other]]. The [[unconscious]] is the discourse of this Other, and thus belongs wholly to the symbolic order. The symbolic is the realm of the Law which regulates desire in the Oedipus complex. It is the realm of culture as opposed to the imaginary order of nature. Whereas the imaginary is characterised by dual relations, the symbolic is characterised by triadic structures, because the intersubjective relationship is always 'mediated' by a third term, the big Other.
 
The symbolic order is also the realm of [[death]], of [[absence]] and of [[lack]]. The symbolic is both the [[pleasure principle]] which regulates the distance from the
Thing, and the [[death drive]] which goes 'beyond the pleasure principle' by means of repetition;<ref>S2, 210</ref> in fact, 'the death drive is only the mask of the symbolic order'.<ref> S2, 326</ref>
 
The symbolic order is completely autonomous: it is not a superstructure determined by biology or genetics. It is completely contingent with respect to the real: 'There is no biological reason, and in particular no genetic one, to account for exogamy. In the human order we are dealing with the complete emergence of a new function, encompassing the whole order in its entirety'.<ref> (S2, 29</ref> Thus while the symbolic may seem to 'spring from the real' as pre-given, this is an illusion, and 'one shouldn't think that symbols actually have come from the real'.<ref> (S2, 238</ref>
 
The totalising, all-encompassing effect of the symbolic order leads Lacan to speak of the symbolic as a universe: 'In the symbolic order the totality is called a universe. The symbolic order from the first takes on its universal character. It isn't constituted bit by bit. As soon as the symbol arrives, there is a universe of symbols.'<ref> (S2, 29)</ref> There is therefore no question of a gradual continuous transition from the imaginary to the symbolic; they are completely heterogeneous domains. Once the symbolic order has arisen, it creates the sense that it has always been there, since 'we find it absolutely impossible to speculate on what preceded it other than by symbols'.<ref> (S2, 5)</ref> For this reason it is strictly speaking impossible to conceive the origin of language, let alone what came before, which is why questions of development lie outside the field of psychoanalysis.
 
Lacan criticises the psychoanalysis of his day for forgetting the symbolic order and reducing everything to the imaginary. This is, for Lacan, nothing less than a betrayal of Freud's most basic insights; 'Freud's discovery is that of the field of the effects, in the nature of man, produced by his relation to the symbolic order. To ignore this symbolic order is condemn the discovery to oblivion.'<ref> (E, 64)</ref>
 
Lacan argues that it is only by working in the symbolic order that the analyst can produce changes in the subjective position of the analysand; these changes will also produce imaginary effects, since the imaginary is structured by the [[signifier]]; a dimension in which elements have no positive existence but which are constituted purely by virtue of their mutual differences.
 
== def ==
 
The social world of linguistic communication, intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of the law (also called the "big Other"). Once a child enters into language and accepts the rules and dictates of society, it is able to deal with others. The acceptance of language's rules is aligned with the Oedipus complex, according to Lacan. The symbolic is made possible because of your acceptance of the Name-of-the-Father, those laws and restrictions that control both your desire and the rules of communication. Through recognition of the Name-of-the-Father, you are able to enter into a community of others. The symbolic, through language, is "the pact which links... subjects together in one action. The human action par excellence is originally founded on the existence of the world of the symbol, namely on laws and contracts" (Freud's Papers 230). The symbolic order works in tension with the imaginary order and the Real. It is closely bound up with the superego and the phallus. See the Lacan module on the structure of the psyche.
 
== def ==
In Jacques Lacan's theory of psychic structures, '''the Symbolic''' refers to the realm of language into which the child enters under the impetus of [[the Name of the Father]]. The child's world, which has already been transformed by [[the Imaginary]] spatial identifications of the [[Mirror Stage]], now becomes bound up in [[signifying chain]]s linked to a [[master signifier]]. Some leftover of [[the Real]] remains, however, unexpressed in language, and resists integration into the Symbolic.<ref>symbolic 6, 88, 105, 118, 145, 193, 244-279-81 [[Seminar XI]]</ref>
 
==See Also==
* [[Psychosis]]
* [[Castration of the subject]]
* [[Child analysis]]
* [[Death instinct]]
* [[Demand]] [[Ethics]]
* [[Formula of Fantasy]]
* [[Female sexuality]]
* [[Feminism and psychoanalysis]]
* [[Foreclosure]]
* [[Fort-Da]]
* [[Ego ideal]]
* [[Ideal ego]]
* [[Imaginary identification]]
* [[Symbolic identification]]
* [[Imaginary]]
* [[Imago]]
* [[Knot]]
* [[L and R schemas]]
* [[Matheme]]
* [[Mirror stage]]
* [[Name-of-the-Father]]
* [[Neurosis]]
* [[Object]]
* [[Object a]]
* [[Optical schema]]
* [[Phallus]]
* [[Privation]]
* [[Psychoses, chronic and delusional Real]]
* [[Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic father]]
* [[Formulas of Sexuation]]
* [[Signifier]]
* [[Structuralism and psychoanalysis]]
* [[Subject]]
* [[Subject's desire]]
* [[Symbol]]
* [[Symbolization]]
* [[Symptom]]
* [[sinthome]]
* [[Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality]]
* [[Topology]]
* [[Unary trait]]
* [[Want of being/lack of being]]
 
==References==
# [[Freud|Freud, Sigmund]]. (1920g). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.
# [[Lacan|Lacan, Jacques]]. (2002). The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis. In his ''Écrits: A selection'' ([[Bruce Fink]], Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton (Original work published 1953)
 
[[Category:Symbolic]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:Dictionary]]
[[Category:Symbolic]]
[[Category:Terms]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
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