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A more than sufficient reason for maintaining the notion of hysteria is that the status of the subject as such is ultimately hysterical. That is to say, when Lacan asserts that the most succinct definition of the subject is 'that which is not an object', the apparent banality of this claim should not deceive us: the subject-in the precise psychoanalytic sense of the subject of desire-only exists insofar as the question remains open of how much of an object she is for the Other, i.e., I am a subject insofar as the radical perplexity persists as to the Other's desire, as to what the Other sees (and finds worthy of desire) in me. In other words, when Lacan claims that there is no desire without an object-cause, this does not amount to the banality according to which every desire is attached to its objective correlative: the 'lost object' which sets in motion my desire is ultimately the subject herself, and the lack in question concerns her uncertainty as to her status for the Other's desire. In this precise sense, desire is always desire of the Other: the subject's desire is the desire to ascertain her status as the object of the Other's desire.<br><br>

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==Source==

* [[Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father|Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father, or How Not to Misread Lacan's Formulas of Sexuation]] ''Lacanian Ink''. Volume 10. Fall 1995. pp 24-39. <http://www.lacan.com/zizekwoman.htm>.

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