Quotes from Lacan's First Seminar

pg. 125
This initial narcissism is to be found, if you wish, on the level of the real image
in my schema, in so far as it makes possible the organisation of the totality of
reality into a limited number of preformed frameworks.
To be sure, this way of functioning is completely different in man and in
animals, which are adapted to a uniform Umwelt For the animal there is a
limited number of pre-established correspondences between its imaginary
structure and whatever interests it in its Umwelt namely whatever is
important for die perpetuation of individuals, themselves a function of the
perpetuation of the type of the species. In man, by contrast, the reflection in the
mirror indicates an original noetic possibility, and introduces a second
narcissism. Its fundamental pattern 8 is immediately the relation to the other.
For man the^ other has a captivating value, on account of the anticipation
that is represented by the unitary image as it is perceived either in the mirror or
in the entire reality of the fellow being.
The other, the alter ego, is more or less confused, according to the stge in life,
with the Ichidecd, this ego-ideal invoked throughout Freud's article. Narcissistic
identification - the word identification, without differentiation, is unusable that of the second narcissism, is identification with the other which, under
normal circumstances, enables man to locate precisely his imaginary and
libidinal relation to the world in general That is what enables him to see in its
place and to structure, as a function of this place and of his world, his being.
Mannoni said ontological just now, I'm quite happy with that. What I would precisely say is - his
libidinal being. The subject sees his being in a reflection in
relation to the other, that is to say in relation to the Ichideal.
Hence you see that one has to distinguish between the functions of the ego on the one hand, they play for man, as they do for every other living creature, a
fundamental role in the structuration of reality - what is more, in man they
have to undergo this fundamental alienation constituted by the reflected image
of himself, which is the Urich, the original form of the Ichideal as well as that of
the relation to the other.
(see also earlier discussion on Weissman the relation of the imaginary to the perpetuation of the
species. Consider the Ichideal as the prinicpal in action, so that either an other or a future version of
oneself is what is acted for. Libidinal-being as species-being. For Umwelt: see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt. In Heidegger, the concept refers to the environment of tools that
we engage with, or the environment nearest and most at home to Dasein, the for-world.)
***
The development of the ego consists in an estrangement from primary narcissism and gives rise to a
vigorous attempt to recover that state. This departure is brought about by means of the

displacement of libido on to an ego-ideal imposed from without, and satisfaction

is brought about from fulfilling this ideal. ~ Freud, On Narcissism
pg. 141
What is my desire? What is my position in the imaginary structuration? This
position is only conceivable in so far as one finds a guide beyond the imaginary,
on the level of the symbolic plane, of the legal exchange which can only be
embodied in the verbal exchange between human beings. This guide governing
the subject is the ego-ideal.
This distinction is absolutely essential, and it allows us to make sense of what
happens in analysis on the imaginary plane, which we call transference.
To get hold of it - this is the value of Freud's text - one has to understand what Verliebtheit is, what love
is. Love is a phenomenon which takes place on
the imaginary level, and which provokes a veritable subduction of the
symbolic, a sort of annihilation, of perturbation of the function of the ego-ideal.
Love reopens the door - as Freud put it, not mincing his words - to perfection.
The Ichideal f the ego-ideal, is the other as speaking, the other in so far as he
has a symbolic relation to me [moi], which, within the terms of our dynamic
manipulation, is both similar to and different from the imaginary libido.
Symbolic exchange is what links human beings to each other, that is, it is
speech, and it makes it possible to identify the subject. That isn't a metaphor X
the symbol begets intelligent beings, as Hegel says.
The Ichideal considered as speaking, can come to be placed in the world of
objects on the level of the Idealich, that is, on the level where this narcissistic
captation which Freud talks about over and over again throughout this text
can take place. You can rest assured that tvheu this confusion occurs, the
apparatus can't be regulated any longer. In other words, when you're in love,
you are mad, as ordinary language puts it.
pg. 146
Here we are also touching on something else, which I've called the Urbtid,
using Bild in a different sense from the way you used it just now - the first model
in which man's delay, the unsticking of man in relation to his own libido, is noticeable. This gap means
that there's a radical difference between the
satisfaction of a desire and the pursuit of the fulfilment of desire - desire is
essentially a negativity, introduced at a point in time which is not especially
primary, but which is crucial, a turning-point [tournant]. Desire is first grasped
in the other, and in the most confused form. The relativity of human desire in
relation to the desire of the other is what we recognise in every reaction of
rivalry, of competition, and even in the entire development of civilization,
including this sympathetic and fundamental exploitation of man by man
whose end is by no means yet in sight, for the reason that it is absolutely
structurafto, and constitutes, as Hegel acknowledged once and for all, the very

structure of the idea of labour. To be sure, it is no longer a question of desire

here, tmt of the total mediation of activity in so far as it is specifically human, in
so far as it has taken the path of human desires.
The subject originally locates and recognises desire through the inter
mediary, not only of his own image, but of the body of his fellow being. It's
exactly at that moment that the human being's consciousness, in the form of
consciousness of self, distinguishes itself. It is in so far as he recognises his desire
in the body ot the other that the exchange takes place. It is in so far as his desire
has gone over to the other side that he assimilates himself to the body of the
other and recognises himself as body.
[]
Exactly. Whereas it is certain that, if there is for us a fundamental given even
before the register of the unhappy consciousness has emerged at all, it's
precisely the distinction between our consciousness and our body. This
distinction makes our body into something factitious, from which our
consciousness is entirely incapable of detaching itself, but on the basis of which
it conceives itself- these are not perhaps the most adequate terms - as distinct.
The distinction between consciousness and body is set up in this abrupt
interchange of roles which takes place in the experience of the mirror when the
other is involved.
Mannoni yesterday evening remarked that, in interpersonal relations,
something factitious is always brought in, namely the projection of others on to
ourselves. This is no doubt because we recognise ourselves as body in so far as
these others, who are indispensable for the recognition of our desire, also have
bodies, or more exactly, in so far as we have one like them.
[]
The body as fragmented desire seeking itself out, and the body as ideal self, are
projected on the side of the subject as fragmented body, while it sees the other as
perfect body. For the subject, a fragmented body is an image essentially
dismemberable from its body.
pg. 156
M. Keller, who is a gestalt philosopher, and who, by virtue of this, believes
himself to be very much superior to the mechanicist philosophers, is very
ironical about the theme of the stimulus-response. Somewhere he says the
following - it really is odd to receive from Mr So-and-so, a publisher in New
York, an order for a book, because if we were in the register of stimulusresponse, one would believe that I had been stimulated by this order and that
my book is the response. Oh, dear me, says Keller, appealing to our so well
founded everyday intuitions, things aren't so simple. I am not just satisfied to
reply to this request, I also find myself in a state of terrible tension. My

equilibrium - a gestalt notion - will only be restored when this tension has
taken on the form of a realisation of the text. This call I have received produces a
dynamic state of disequilibrium in me. It/will only be satisfied when it has been
assumed, that is to say, when the circle has been closed, that circle which here
and now is anticipated by the very existence of this call for a full response.
This is by no means a sufficient description. Keller assumes that a preformed
model of the right response exists in the subject, and introduces an element of
the already-there. At the limit, it's having a response to everything through a
dormative power. He is satisfied with postulating that the register of relations
which generate any action means that the subject hasn't actualised the model
which is already entirely inscribed within him. That is only the transcription, at
a slightly more developed level, of the mechanistic theory.
No, you must not misconceive [mconnatre] the symbolic register here,
through which the human being as such is constituted. In fact, from the
moment that M. Keller receives the order, has replied yes, has signed a contract,
M. Keller is not the same M. Keller. There's another Keller, a contracted Keller,
and also another publishing house, a publishing house which has one more
contract, one more symbol.
I am using this crude, obvious example because it brings us to the heart of the
dialectic of labour. Simply as a result of having defined myself in relation to
some man as his son, and of my having defined him as my father, something
happens which, however intangible it may appear to be, weighs just as heavily
as the carnal procreation which unites us. And, practically speaking, within
the human order, it weighs even more heavily. Because, even before I am
capable of pronouncing the words father and son, and even if he is gaga and can
no longer pronounce these words, the entire human system around us already
defines us, with all the impending consequences that that brings with it, as
father and son.
So, the dialectic of the ego and the other is transcended, is placed on a higher
plane, in relation to the other, solely through the function of language, in so far
as it is more or less identical, and at all events is fundamentally linked up with what we should call the
rule, or better still, the law. At each instant of its
intervention, this law creates something new. Every situation is transformed by
its intervention, whatever it is, except when we talk to no purpose.
pg. 167
What is ignorance? Certainly it is a dialectical notion, since it is only within
the perspective of truth that it is constituted as such. If the subject does not refer
himself to the truth, there is no ignorance. If the subject doesn't begin to ask
himself the question what is and what is not, there is no reason for there to be a
true and a false, nor even, beyond that, reality and appearance.
pg. 178

For the human being the word or the concept is nothing other than the word
in its materiality. It is the thing itself. 3 It is not just a shadow, a breath, a virtual
illusion of the thing, it is the thing itself. 3
Think for a moment in the real. It is owing to the fact that the word elephant
exists in their language, and hence that the elephant enters into their
deliberations, that men have been capable of taking, in relation to elephants,
even before touching them, decisions which are more far-reaching for these
pachyderms than anything else that has happened to them throughout their
history - the crossing of a river or the natural decimation of a forest. With
nothing more than the word elephant and the way in which men use it,
propitious or unpropitious things, auspicious or inauspicious things, in any
event catastrophic things have happened to elephants long before anyone
raised a bow or a gun to them.
Pg. 181
The aggressive reaction to Oedipal rivalry is related to one of these changes of
level. At first, the father constitutes one of the most conspicuous of the
imaginary figures of the Idealich, and as such is invested with a Verliebiheit *
which is clearly isolated, named and described by Freud. It is in so far as a
regression of the libidinal position takes place that the subject reaches the
Oedipal phase, between three and five years of age. Then the aggressive feeling
of rivalry and hate towards the father makes its appearance. A very slight
change of libidinal level in relation to a specific threshold transforms love into
hate - moreover, it oscillates for a while.
[*being in love, or falling in love]
pg. 193
The fundamental fact which analysis reveals to us and which I am in the
process of teaching you, is that the ego is an imaginary function. If you blind
yourself to this fact, you'll find yourself in step with the line that the whole, or
nearly the whole of analysis, has taken.
If the ego is an imaginary function, it is not to be confused with the subject. What do we call a subject?
Quite precisely, what, in the development of objectivation, is outside of the object.
One might say that the ideal of science is to reduce the object to what can be
closed and fastened within a system of interacting forces. In the end, the object
is only ever like that for science, and there is only ever one subject - the scientist
who considers the whole, and hopes one day to reduce everything to a
determinate play of symbols encompassing all the interactions between objects.
Except, when it comes to organised beings, the scientist finds himself obliged
after all always to imply that action exists. Certainly one can always consider
an organised being as an object, but as long as one grants it the status of
organism, one retains, if only implicitly, the idea that it is a subject.

During analysis, for example of a piece of instinctual behaviour, one can

ignore the subjective position for a while. But this position can under no
circumstances be ignored when it comes to the speaking subject. We are
necessarily obliged to admit the speaking subject as subject. But why? For one
simple reason - because he can lie. That is, he is distinct from what he says.
Well, the dimension of the speaking subject, of the speaking subject qua
deceiver, is what Freud uncovered for us in the unconscious.
In science, the subject is only sustained, in the end, on the plane of
consciousness, since the subject x in science is in fact the scientist. It is whoever
possesses the system of the science that sustains the dimension of the subject.
He is the subject, in so far as he is the reflection, the mirror, the support of the
objectal world. In contrast, Freud shows us that in the human subject there is
something which speaks, which speaks in the full sense of the word, that is to
say something which knowingly lies, and without the contribution of
consciousness. That restores - in the obvious, strict, experimental sense of the
term - the dimension of the subject.
By the same token, this dimension is no longer confused with the ego. The ego
is deprived of its absolute position in the subject. The ego acquires the status of a
mirage, as the residue, it is only one element in the objectal relations of the
subject.
[genital love is between the symbolic and the imaginary pg. 217.]
pg. 223
What differentiates human society from animal society - the term doesn't
frighten me - is that the former cannot be grounded upon any objectifiable
bond. The intersubjective dimension as such must come into it. The masterslave relation does not therefore involve the domestication of man by man.
That cannot be enough. So, what grounds this relation? It is not that the one
who declares himself vanquished pleas for mercy, it is rather that the master
enters into this struggle for reasons of pure prestige, and has risked his life. This
risk establishes his superiority, and it is in the name of that, not of his strength,
that he is recognised as master by the slave.
This situation begins with an impasse, because his recognition by the slave is
worth nothing to the master, since only a slave has recognised him, that is to
say someone that he does not recognise as a man. The initial structure of this
Hegelian dialectic seems thus to lead to a dead end. You can see therefore that it
is not without its affinities with the impasse of the imaginary situation.
However, this situation does unfold further. Its point of departure, being
imaginary, is hence mythical. But its extensions lead us on to the symbolic
plane. You know the extensions - that is what makes us speak of the master and
th% slave. Indeed, beginning with the mythical situation, an action is
undertaken, and establishes the relation between pleasure [jouissance] and
labour. A law is imposed upon the slave, that he should satisfy the desire and

the pleasure [jouissance] of the other. It is not sufficient for him to plea for mercy,
he has to go to work. And when you go to work, there are rules, hours - we
enter into the domain of the symbolic.
If you look at it closely, this domain of the symbolic does not have a simple
relation of succession to the imaginary domain whose pivot is the fatal
intersubjective relation. We do not pass from one to the other in one jump from
the anterior to the posterior, once the pact and the symbol are established. In
fact, the myth itself can only be conceived of as already bounded by the register
of the symbolic, for the reason that I underlined just now - the situation cannot
be grounded in goodness knows what biological panic at the approach of death.
Death is never experienced as such, is it - it is never real. Man is only ever afraid
of an imaginary fear. But that is not all. In the Hegelian myth, death is not even
structured like a fear, it is structured like a risk, and, in a word, like a stake.
From the beginning, between the master and the slave, there's a rule of the
game.
I won't push this today. I am only saying it for those of you who are most
open - the intersubjective relation, which unfolds in the imaginary, is at the
same time, in so far as it structures a human action, implicitly implicated in a
rule of the game.
pg. 224
What counts is not that the other sees where I am, but that he sees where I am
going, that is to say, quite precisely, that he sees where I am not. In every analysis
of the intersubjective relation, what is essential is not what is there, what is seen.
What structures it is what is not there.
pg. 228
The instauration of the lie in reality is brought about by speech. And it is
precisely because it introduces what isn't, that it can also introduce what is.
Before speech, nothing either is or isn't [rien n'est, ni n'est pas]. Everything is
already there, no doubt, but it is only with speech that there are things which
are - which are true or false, that is to say which are - and things which are not.
Truth hollows out its way into the real thanks to the dimension of speech. There
is neither true nor false prior to speech. Truth is introduced along with it, and so
is the lie, and other registers as well. Before we go our various ways today, let
us put them in a sort of triangle with three apexes. There, the lie. Here,
the mistake - not error, to which I will come back. And then, what else? ambiguity, to which, by its very nature, speech is doomed. Because, the very act
of speech, which founds the dimension of truth, always remains, by this fact,
behind, beyond. Speech is in its essence ambiguous.
Symmetrically, the hole, the gap of being as such is hollowed out in the real.
The notion of being, as soon as we try to grasp it, proves itself to be as
ungraspable as that of speech. Because being, the very verb itself, only exists in
the register of speech. Speech introduces the hollow of being into the texture of

the real, the one and the other holding on to and balancing each other, exactly
correlative.
pg. 286
The master, let us get it straight, has a much more abrupt relation to death.
The master in the pure state is in a desperate position in this respect, because he
has nothing but his own death to wait for, since he expects nothing from the
death of his slave, except a little inconvenience. On the other hand, the slave
has a great deal to expect from the master's death. Beyond the death of the
master, he really will be obliged to confront death, as every fully realised being
has to, and to assume, in the Heideggerian sense, his being-for-death. Now
precisely, the obsessional does not assume his being-for-death, he has been
reprieved, that is what has to be shown him. That is the function of the image of
the master as such.
0. MANNONI: . . . who is the analyst
. . . who is embodied in the analyst. It is only after having sketched out several
times the imaginary exits from the master's prison, and done this in accordance
with certain scansions, in accordance with a certain timing, it is only then
that the obsessional can realise the concept of his obsessions, that is to say what
they signify.
In each obsessional case, there necessarily is a certain number of temporal
scansions, and even numerical signs. I have already touched on that in an
article on 'Logical time'. The subject thinking the thought of the other, sees in
the other the image and the sketch of his own movements. Now, each time the
other is exactly the same as the subject, there is no other master than the
absolute master, death. But the slave requires a certain time to see that.
All because, like everyone else, he is much too happy being a slave.