Concept
Metaphor
In Lacan's teaching, the substitution of one signifier for another in the signifying chain, the replaced signifier persisting as latent and repressed, so that a new signification arises from the substitution. Drawing on Jakobson's distinction between the metaphoric and metonymic poles of language, Lacan presented it as the linguistic structure of Freud's condensation, as metonymy is that of displacement, and built on it the formula of the paternal metaphor.
Development
1957
introduced by Jacques Lacan
In “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” (1957, collected in Écrits), Lacan defines metaphor as one signifier taking another's place in the chain, the hidden one remaining linked to the rest, and makes it the structure of condensation and of the symptom.
In Écrits (1966)
Relations
- 1957 derives from Condensation
Lacan's metaphor is his linguistic reformulation of Freud's condensation. In Seminar XI he says his formula of metaphor is essential for showing where the unconscious appears, because signifying condensation is fundamental to it.
- 1957 introduced by Jacques Lacan
In “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” (1957, collected in Écrits), Lacan defines metaphor as one signifier taking another's place in the chain, the hidden one remaining linked to the rest, and makes it the structure of condensation and of the symptom.
- 1957 opposes Metonymy
Following Jakobson, Lacan makes metaphor and metonymy the two opposite poles of the signifier's action. Metaphor substitutes one signifier for another and crosses the bar into signification; metonymy connects signifier to signifier and keeps the bar in place. He maps the pair onto condensation and displacement, and onto the symptom and desire.
- 1958 gave rise to Name-of-the-Father
In his 1958 essay on psychosis, Lacan casts the Name-of-the-Father in the form of his metaphor: it substitutes for the mother's desire and so produces the phallic signification. Psychosis follows when this signifier is foreclosed and the paternal metaphor fails.
Works
- 1966
Lacan's collected papers, published by Éditions du Seuil in 1966: a volume of some nine hundred pages gathering articles and essays written over three decades, from 1936 to 1966. It includes the text on the mirror stage given at Zurich in 1949; the Rome discourse of 1953, 'The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis', which has been called the founding manifesto of Lacanianism; 'The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious' (1957); and the 1958 essay on the treatment of psychosis. Across these papers Lacan pursues his return to Freud by way of structural linguistics, reading the unconscious as structured like a language, and turns against the ego psychology of Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein. The book became a bestseller in France and made Lacan known as 'the French Freud', while also fixing his reputation for difficulty. Its first complete English translation, by Bruce Fink with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg, was published by W. W. Norton in 2006.
- 1973
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
The seminar Lacan gave in 1964 at the École Normale Supérieure, after the International Psychoanalytical Association had made his removal from the list of training analysts the condition for admitting the Société Française de Psychanalyse. Established by Jacques-Alain Miller, it was published by Éditions du Seuil in 1973 as Book XI of Le Séminaire, and in English in Alan Sheridan's translation. Speaking to a larger and less specialised audience than before, Lacan set out to bring coherence to four concepts on which psychoanalysis rests: the unconscious, repetition, transference and the drive. He opens with his 'excommunication', and moves from asking whether psychoanalysis is a science to asking what kind of science could include it. The seminar treats the unconscious and repetition, the gaze as objet petit a, transference and the drive, and the field of the Other, where alienation, aphanisis and the subject supposed to know are taken up.
See also
People
References
- The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis1973Evidence for a relation
- Écrits1966Evidence for a relation