JACQUES LACAN'S RETURN TO FREUD:

WOMAN DOES NOT EXIST*

Paul Verhaeghe
I would like to talk to you this evening about two interesting
subjects. The first one is women, which is always very interesting. Maybe
it will become clear this evening why women are much more interesting
than men, who are as a category, after all is said and done, rather boring.
The second subject is sex, which is even more interesting. That's the good
news. The bad news is that, following Jacques Lacan, neither of these two
exist, which means we have to spend the entire evening talking about the
nonexisting... To be more specific, Lacan has said that The Woman, in
capitals, that 'The Woman does not exist', in the original French: 'L
Fetnme n'existe pas', that's why he writes Th/ewith a slash through it;
secondly, that The Sexual Relationship does not exist', 11 n'y a pas de
rapport sexueV. The second statement is a logical consequence of the first
one, which is the most important of the two: if The woman does not exist,
there can't be such a thing as THE sexual relationship with THE woman.
Clearly these statements are rather provocative. They are meant to
be. It is precisely the kind of statement that gave the name of Lacan the
ring of controversy, of incomprehensibility or esoterism. Well, that's my
second and most important goal for this evening: explaining why those
* This article was originally presented to the members of APPI, students of the Centre for
Psychoanalytic Studies LSB and the School of Psychotherapy St. Vincents Hospital, at
LSB College, May 1994.

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Lacanian statements are strictly Freudian and how they constitute the
essence of Lacan's return to Freud.
First of all, if we want to grasp the meaning of those difficult
statements, we have to put them back into their original context. In their
isolated state, they are simply meaningless, just as an isolated part of the
manifest dream doesn't have any meaning at all. They should be
understood within the greater framework of Lacanian theory, more
particularly in relation to the Symbolic Order. As you probably know, the
Symbolic Order is the collection of all signifiers. It is what Lacan calls the
signifying chain, 'la chaine signifiante'. A synonym of the Symbolic is the
so-called big Other. If you don't understand this condensation of the
Symbolic and Other, just think of the idea of mother-language. The
mother, being the first big Other, is also the one that teaches the child its
language. Within that framework of the Symbolic /Other, the child has to
obtain its identity, based on the processes of alienation and separation,
which means: based on the dialectics of desire.
The important thing about this big Other, or this Symbolic Order, is
that it is not an all-embracing one. No! It shows a central lack. The
relationship between the register of the Real and the Symbolic Order is
one of incompleteness, meaning that the Symbolic does not succeed in
covering up the Real completely. There is a structural lack in the Symbolic
through which the Real gazes at us. The Lacanian notation of this
structural lack is the capital A (Autre) or, in English, 0 (Other), with a
slash through it. This negative notation finds its positive counterpart in
the famous object small o, in French: Tobjet petit a', being that part of the
Real that cannot be symbolized. So we can write it as follows:
a
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The important thing to understand right now is that this part of the Real
cannot be symbolized, that this part constitutes the object of desire. What
does the Other want? Answer: he desires that which he cannot have, that
which would procure for him so much jouissance that he would
disappear within it. No wonder that this object small a forms the central
part around which every fantasy circulates, and that it is the point where
the pleasure principle fails. The Lacanian formula shows this circulating
movement in the fantasy:

The central question to be asked of course concerns the content of that

object a or
What is lacking in the big Other? The first Freudian answer
that comes to mind is easy: it's about castration. Well, it's a little bit more
complicated than that, really. Castration, even in Freud's theory, is only
one denomination for a nameless, fundamental lack with which he is
confronted every time he wants to go to the primal source of things. For
example, when searching for the starting point of repression, he had to
postulate primal repression (The Schreber case), when looking for the
essence of The Father, he had to invent the myth of a primal father
(Totem and Taboo), and, when looking for The Woman, he stumbled on
the idea of castration (Little Hans). No wonder then, that when he was
looking for the origin of the sexual relationship, he had to postulate a
primal scene (The Wolf man).
In the meantime, we have formulated the three points in the Real
where the Symbolic order fails to give an answer. Those three points are
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formulated in well-known Lacanian statements: Th woman does not

exist; The Other of the Other does not exist; There is no such a thing as
The sexual relationship. These three formulae recover each other,
differing only in their accentuation: there is no signifier for The Woman,
because there is no Other of the Other; there is no sexual relationship
between the man and The Woman, because the latter does not exist
And now we have to explain all that. We have to explain it in
Freudian terms, because that was our aim for this evening. In view of our
restricted time, I will limit myself to one of the three: the non-existence of
the Woman, but you will see and hear the interconnections between the
three statements.
Where do we start with Freud? We start at the beginning with his
so-called trauma theory. I want to demonstrate that Freud's trauma
concerns what Lacan will conceptualize with the idea of 'the Real as
impossible'. Secondly, we will concentrate on the shift in Freud's theory
towards the idea of fantasy. Concerning that point, it will become clear that
primal fantasies have a defensive function, and furthermore, that the
Imaginary as a category is, on the whole, a defensive entity. Indeed, the
link between the two, between trauma and fantasy, lies in the general idea
of 'Abwehr', defence.
So, we start with the Real as Impossible. Freud's very first
conceptualization on hysteria focuses on the idea of conflict between two
different groups of representations, in German: 'Vorstellungen'.
Representations or 'Vorstellungen': of course we can also translate this as
'signifiers'. The conflict is such that one group is incompatible with the
other, and becomes the target of the defensive system, the 'Abwehr1; the
result is that the incompatible group is cut off from all associative
connections and becomes isolated. Freud refines this theory in the last
chapter of his Studies on Hysteria. Based on his clinical experience, he
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concludes that the psychical material of hysteria presents itself as a

structure which is stratified in at least three different ways. Moreover, this
material is arranged around what Freud calls 'the nucleus in which the
traumatic factor has culminated or the pathogenic idea has founded its
purest manifestation.'1 The first layer is a simple chronological order, in
which the newest material appears first, as an outer cover, and so on. The
second order consists of a concentric stratification around the pathogenic
nucleus, with an ever-increasing degree of resistance in proportion as the
strata are nearer to the nucleus. The nucleus itself is the most forbidden
part of it. The third kind of arrangement is the most important one. It is
a dynamic linkage according to thought-content. The linkage is made by a
logical thread which tends to take an irregular and twisting path from the
surface to the deepest layers and back. This logical chain contains nodal
points at which two or more threads meet. Those meeting-points are
'Knotenpunkte', knots. They show how a symptom is overdetermined; in
his letters to Fliess, Freud uses another name for these 'Knotenpunkte',
which is even more specific: he calls them 'Wortbrucke', word-bridges. It
is not too far-fetched to recognize in this theory the idea of signifiers
which are overloaded, dense with meaning and forming a relay for the
free association.2
At this point, we can recognize one of the major Lacanian ideas,
namely:
'L'inconscient est structure comme un langage', T h e
unconscious is structured as a language'. Indeed, the first layer is of
course the synchronic stretch of the signifying chain, the second layer is
the vertical, diachronic ordering, and the third one is the idiosyncratic,
thematic ordering of the signifiers, characterizing one and only one
1
2

S. Freud. Studies on Hysteria. S.E., II, p. 288.

ibid, p. 288-290.

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subject. It is precisely this last layer that makes free association into the
powerful instrument it is.
schematic: 3

Interesting as this may be, we now have to turn our attention

exclusively to that mysterious nucleus. In the Studies on Hysteria, it is
quite clear that Freud believes in the idea of a traumatic incident.
Moreover, it is a traumatic incident within the mysterious realm of
sexuality. Mysterious, because it is so thoroughly defensively cathected
that it can scarcely be put into words, in spite of all efforts. Freud
concentrates on this and we can find it in several other works. For
example, he talks about the 'Kern unseres Wesen', the nucleus of our
being, about the 'NabeV, the navel of the dream, the point in front of
which the patient stops associating. He will even call it the 'Mycelium',
which reminds him of course of his favorite pastime, collecting
mushrooms. The denotations of this nucleus may be different, but there is
6

"While these two (the first layers) would be represented (...) by a continuous line, curved
or straight, the course of the logical chain would have to be indicated by a broken line
which would pass along the most roundabout paths from the surface to the deepest layers
and back, (...)". S. Freud, op.cit, p. 289.

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one characteristic that keeps on coming back: it cannot be put into words,
so, it cannot be psychologically elaborated by the patient, nor abreacted.
Freud uses in this context the idea of 'psychische UnzulnglichkeiV,
psychical inaccessibility.
Well, this is the first major point of Lacan's 'retour a Freud': there
is a traumatic nucleus not only at the base of every neurosis, but at the
base of every human being; it concerns that part of the Real for which
there is no signifier, it is the point where the Symbolic order fails, that
which has already been given its proper denomination:
or object small
a. It is precisely this characteristic that explains an important correction at
the end of the Studies on Hysteria. The very first starting point of hysteria
is not the conflict between two groups of representations, rather, its
starting point lies in the opposition between something traumatic and real
on the one hand, and the failing psychical elaboration on the other. This
very idea can also be found in draft K within the Freud-Fliess
correspondence. There we can read that 'the primary hysterical symptom
is the manifestation of fright accompanied by a gap in the psyche'.4 This
citation brings us something new: the basic reaction is one of anxiety. In
the confrontation with that part of the Real where the Symbolic order
fails, the first reaction is a non-mediated anxiety, which is just another
expression for panic.
This brings us to what Freud himself called the 'cornerstone of the
psychoanalytic theory', namely the idea of repression. In his first
publications he uses the term 'Abwehr', defence, sometimes he talks about
primary defence'. Later on these two will of course become repression and
primal repression. This primal repression has almost completely
disappeared in the postfreudian theory. To give you an idea about this
4

S. Freud. Extracts from the Fliess Papers. S.E., I, p. 228.

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disappearance: Greenstein, being one of the greatest bibliographic indexes

of psychoanalysis, has only four references to primal repression, out of a
total of 96,000. Primal repression has been repressed out of the official
theory. It is too difficult, too mythical. You probably know the Freudian
formulation dating from 1911 in his Schreber Case5: in primal repression
there is nothing repressed as such, there is something left behind; the
motive has something to do with massive anxiety, and the sole
mechanism is the so-called countercathexis. The question to ask here, is of
course: countering what? That never became very clear, but the result of
the process was the installation of the unconscious nucleus, which
thereafter forms a point of attraction for later repressions.
Well, it is my proposition that the idea of primal repression can
only be understood in the light of Freud's early clinical formulations
about hysteria, and that this early theory finds its further elaboration in
the Lacanian conceptualization of the relationship between the Real and
the Symbolic.
So we have to go back to the early Freud. At the end of 1895 he
writes a letter to Fliess in which we can read a remarkable paragraph:
'Hysteria necessarily presupposes a primary experience of unpleasure that is, of a passive nature. The natural sexual passivity of women
explains their being more inclined to hysteria'.6 In this peculiar paragraph
we find a very interesting explication of the trauma idea. There are three
layers in this.
The first one is about hysteria and passivity. This is an idea that
keeps turning up: the basic experience leading to hysteria is a passive one
against which defence is only possible in a further development. Freud
5
6

S.Freud. Schreber. S.E., XII, p. 67.

S. Freud. Extracts from the Fliess papers. Draft K, S.E., I, p. 228.

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will extend this idea to obsessional neurosis, indeed, to neurosis in

general. So, the proposition can be generalized: every psychoneurotic
development starts with an unpleasurable experience of passivity, which
gives rise to a defensive action.
Second layer: passivity and femininity, 'the natural sexual passivity
of women'. This sentence starts a well known controversy, with the
discussion of the 1930's as its highlight (Jones, Freud, Lampl de Groot),
concerning womanhood and gender identity. Freud will never succeed in
formulating a satisfying answer. The only impossible solution to which he
continually returned was the analogy between passivity and femininity7,
and it was precisely the impossibility of this answer that resulted in
Freud's well-known complaint:
'Was will das Weib?', 'What does
woman want?'.
This brings us to the third layer: hysteria, passivity, femininity. In a
draft dated the 5th of May 1897 Freud writes: 'It is to be suspected that the
essentially repressed element is always Femininity'. The English
translation in the Standard Edition is not exact, they translate: '...the
essentially repressed element is always what is feminine', while in the
original German we read: 'Die Vermutung geht dahin, dass das eigentlich
verdrangte Element stets das Weibliche ist.'8 Das Weibliche, Femininity,
and not 'what is feminine' (In German this would be: 'Etwas
Weibliches'). This is of course a very surprising idea: the most
fundamentally repressed idea is the idea of femininity. Surprising as this
may sound, it is perfectly coherent with the earlier statements. Let us
7

Cf. The important footnote added in 1915 to the "Drei Abhandlungen", S.E. ,VII, p. 219 220, confirmed by another addition at the end of the second section in the second essay, S.E.,
VII, p. 160.
8
S. Freud. Extracts from the Fliess Papers. Draft M, p. 251.

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recapitulate: every neurosis starts with an unpleasurable, even a traumatic

experience of passivity; passivity is the psychic representation of the idea
of femininity; therefore, the basically repressed element is nothing else but
femininity. No wonder Freud never succeeded in finding a proper answer
to his question about womanhood. There seems to be no place, more
particularly, no proper signifier in order to signify The Woman as such.
This means that we have discovered, together with Freud of course,
that one element in that nucleus, or navel, or unspeakable mycelium, that
one element of it has everything to do with femininity. There is no proper
signifier in the Symbolic order. This is precisely what Lacan will express
with his 'L/z Femme n'existe pas', The7 Woman, the one and only signifier
signifying The Woman does not exist. Instead of that, we get an endless
chain of signifiers, trying to express the inexpressible Real. As such, this
endless chain has a defensive function, because it tries to furnish an
answer. We will focus now on those defences.
Even in Freud's earliest publications, he already makes a
differentiation between a primary and a secondary defence. The first one,
Freud's 'primare Abwehf, is the most radical one, it is what he will later
conceptualize with the idea of primal repression. It is the most radical one,
because there can't be anything repressed in the proper sense of the word,
precisely because of the fact that the word, the signifier is lacking. For lack
of a signifier, femininity as such can't be repressed. The special
mechanism of the primal repression consists in what is called by Freud
'einer Grenzvorstellung*', 'a boundary idea'.9 Instead of, and in defence
against, the traumatic Real, the subject constructs that boundary idea, or,
in Lacanian terminology, a boundary signifier. We can read this already in
Freud, where he states that this boundary signifier becomes 'the first
9

S. Freud, op. a t , Draft K, p. 228-229.

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symbol of the repressed material*, 'zum ersten Symbol des Verdrangten'.10

This is, of course, the S1, the master-signifier, whose function is that of the
cork on the bottle, or, more accurately: a border around the Real. For those
among you who are familiar with the discourse theory: in the primary
discourse, that of the Master, the S1 of Master Signifier covers the object
small a: S 1 /a, it's the lid on the pot.
Back to Freud now. He will elaborate this theory on defence in his
next letters to Fliess, specifically in letters 46 and 52. It is in those two
letters that we find a very exciting idea about the relationship between
defence and development. The basic idea runs as follows: the psychical
material is registered in a certain form, depending on the developmental
stage of the psyche. This implies that the material has to be translated in a
new expression every time there is a further development. The
development described by Freud is in essence an evolution from a purely
perceptive functioning, with perceptive memory traces, up to a purely
verbal functioning with signifiers. The defence mechanisms are operating
on the border of every transition. Indeed, on every frontier a translation of
the psychical material must take place. Then, Freud writes literally: 'Die
Versagung der Uebersetzung, das ist dass was klinisch 'Verdrangung'
heisst', 'A failure of translation - that is what is known clinically as
'repression'. 11
It is not so farfetched to recognize in this theory the ideas that he
will elaborate in the last chapter of his Studies on Hysteria. Indeed, the
starting point there of hysteria, that which necessitates all defence, is
something that could not be put into words while happening, and is that
for which every later verbalization will be unsatisfactory. So the first
10
11

ibid
S. Freud. Extracts from the Fliess Papers, letter 52. S.E., I, p. 235. See also p. 229-240.

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translation is in fact a verbalization as such, the installation of the

boundary signifier on the border. The experience itself, on the moment of
experience, is one of traumatic passivity. This primary defence is what he
will later call primal repression and consists in leaving something behind
in the Real, by putting a lid on it, a border structure around it, Freud's first
symbol, Lacan's S1. This first symbol becomes elaborated in ever-increasing
associative complexes, who keep the same function: trying to signify what
was not originally signified. It is there that we find the further defence
mechanisms, this time operating on words, on signifiers. This is
repression as such, which is always an 'afterwards repression'. It's difficult
to render this idea in English. In German it reads 'Nachdrangung, Nach
meaning 'afterwards', after the first repression. The operational
consequence of this theory is that in the clinical practice we can only find
the repressed signifiers up to a certain point. At that point, we meet the
more fundamental lack of the big Other in relationship to the Real. This
point is always one of anxiety. This consequence is a very fundamental
one, because it determines the goal and the end of the cure. As long as
Freud had the idea that the nucleus could be put into words, the goal of
analysis was to find the final word and, with that, the final 'abreaction',
after which the patient could live happily ever after. The discovery of the
fundamental non-symbolic, non-verbal character of this nucleus, what
Lacan has conceptualized with his A, makes this final utterance
impossible, the analysis becomes 'unendlich', interminable, the final goal
has to be defined in other terms.
It is at this point that we find the major shift in Freud's theory. This
shift does not imply, as certain historians want us to believe, that Freud no
longer believed his patients, that he rejected the idea of real trauma and
considered the story of his patients as mere fantasies. It is not a matter of
'either - or', either real trauma, or mere fantasy, rather, Freud defines a
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new relationship between trauma and fantasy. The primal fantasies make
part of the signifying chain, and they have the same defensive function as
their starting-point, the S1: they constitute the attempt of the subject to
signify the unsignifiable. Freud will elaborate this idea in three letters to
Fliess, in which fantasies are defined as protective structures giving
meaning and signification to earlier traumas which were not understood
at the moment of happening. 12 It is within his fantasies that the subject
attempts to construct the female symbolic identity and the relationship
that follows from it. The starting point of these fantasies always concerns
the same question: what does she want, what would satisfy her desire?
Due to the lack of a determining signifier, the question remains open, and
the threat that comes from it, remains. Hence Freud's fundamental
despair in his 'Was will das Weib1, What does woman want? This means
that every subject formulates his or her personal answer to that question,
and, in the meantime, formulates his own identity. Indeed, the defining
in fantasy of the desire of the Other, implies in the meantime the
definition of the position of the subject itself. Some of you probably know
the Lacanian definition of the subject: 'The signifier is that what
represents the subject for another signifier', so the subject itself is nothing
else but the effect of the chain of signifiers. And what else are fantasies but
a particular chain of signifiers?
It is quite clear men that the goal of the psychoanalytic practice has
everything to do with these fantasies. This is what Lacan tried to elaborate
with the idea of 'traversee du fantasme\ the journey through the fantasy.
It is not possible to reach a point beyond fantasy as such, the real remains
real; the goal lies in the 'subversion of the subject and the dialectic of
desire', which is of course one of the leading chapters in Lacan's Ecrits.
12

Letters dated 6-4-1897 and 16-5-1897.

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Now, let us try to summarize what we have already stated, - first of

all in relation to Freud. As we have seen, neurosis starts at the point
where something cannot be put into words; this lack of verbalization has a
traumatic incidence. Later defence consists in elaborating representations
about that which was originally not representable. This traumatic starting
point always has something to do with sexuality. One of its central themes
is femininity or passivity, or a strange combination of those two.
Femininity as such seems to be impossible to represent for the psychical
apparatus, passivity being a substitute representation. Hence, the narrow
relationship between womanhood and neurosis, especially hysteria.
That was Freud, - now we turn to Lacan. Put into Lacanian terms,
neurosis finds its starting point in the relationship between the Symbolic
and the Real. The Symbolic is not total, on the contrary, it has a
structurally defined lack in relationship to the Real. This lack is threefold:
it concerns the female identity, the guaranteeing big Other and The sexual
relationship. The implication of this lack is that everybody, literally 'every
- body', has to construct an answer. It is precisely this answer that gives
birth to the subject, the subject being an effect of the signifier. Indeed, this
answer will determine the position of the subject in view of the lack of the
big Other, or, more particularly, in view of the desire of the big Other.
These answers are nothing but the basic fantasies of the human being, in
which he constitutes not only his own identity as a subject 8, but also that
of the Other.
Now, does this mean that there is no difference between Freud and
Lacan, that Lacan only brings us a redefinition of the Freudian theory, or is
there more to it? Well, there is more, and I'd like to end with something
that lies beyond Lacan's return to Freud.
We started with the early Freud, and we will conclude with one of
his later works, with Analysis Terminable and Interminable. As you will
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probably know, this article ends with a pessimistic conclusion. If an

analysis is thoroughly carried through, one reaches the bedrock of biology
where there are no further advances to be expected. Usually one takes it
for granted that this biological bedrock is the castration complex, with its
two different forms of expression: penis envy for the female, castration
anxiety for the male. Well, this is only part of the story. If one reads the
relevant chapter in Freud, there is much more to it.13 He speaks about a
general principle that has been forced into different forms of expression,
due to the difference between the sexes. This general principle could be
understood in terms of the castration complex, but, and now I quote
Freud, 'but from the start, repudiation of femininity would have been the
correct description of this remarkable feature in the psychical life of
human beings'. 1 4 And, in the very last paragraph we read: The
repudiation of femininity can be nothing else than a biological fact, a part
of the great riddle of sex.'15 The elaboration within the text itself brings us
back to the idea of resemblance between femininity and passivity, which is
still as mysterious as ever.
It is at this point that Lacan's return to Freud becomes a further
elaboration of Freud. With Lacanian theory, we can understand why
passivity is so dreaded, and secondly, why there is a link between passivity
and femininity. This has everything to do with the mother-child
relationship, in the early pre-oedipal period. At that time, the child is
everything for the mother, it is her object small a, it is reduced to the
fulfilment of her desire. The infant and the mother form a symbiotic dyad
of pure jouissance. It is only later on, when the infant has acquired an
13
14
15

S. Freud. Analysis Terminable and Interminable. S.E., XXIII, p. 250-253.

ibid, p. 250.
ibid, p. 252.

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identity as a subject, that this originally lustful situation becomes

unlustful, even dangerous: being reduced to the desire of the Other
implies not only the impossibility of a desire of one's own, it implies even
the reduction to the position of the passive object of jouissance of the big
Other. This reduction implies that you no longer exist as a subject. It
reminds us of course of the situation where you are confronted with the
sphinx and her riddle, the sphinx that will devour you if you don't
produce the right answer, that is, the right signifier. Every time the subject
is confronted with the nameless desire of the big Other, this old fear arises
again, the fear of being reduced to the passive object, that is, to non
existence. It is here that we find the origin of the essential neurotic
conflict: that every neurotic subject longs for what he fears, namely, the
return to the symbiotic relationship with the first big Other. For the male,
there is a ready-made answer: they can identify with the signifier of the
Symbolic Phallus, which gives them a phallic-active position; that's why
they are all alike, they belong to the same category. (If you know one, you
know them all.) On the contrary, for the female, there is no such readymade answer. That explains one of the traditional feminist complaints,
namely, that woman is far too frequently only an object of male desire,
that is, reduced to the dreaded passive position. It is at this point that we
meet again the combination between femininity and passivity.
The difference between Freud and Lacan is that in Freudian theory
this seems to be a strange biological necessity with grave consequences for
the terminating point of an analysis. With Lacan, the accent shifts to the
relationship between the Real and the Symbolic, which opens up new
alternatives. Freud sees no possibility of going beyond what he believes to
be a biological fact, while the Lacanian definition of the terminating point
gives rise to the dimensions of ethics and creation. The Woman does not
exist, the man exists far too much. Both of them can deconstruct and
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reconstruct their identity during an analysis, in which they share the same
experience, namely that their identity or lack of identity, is nothing but an
alienating fantasy, alienated in view of the feared desire of the big Other
and the reduction to being merely the object of this desire. The working
through of this, 'traver see du fantasme', the working through of this
opens up ethics; - Which position do I consciously want in view of the
desire of the other? and opens up creation; - In which direction will I
develop my own answers in view of the lack in the symbolic system,
answers that will make up my identity?
Th^ woman does not exist, neither does The sexual relationship.
This means that there is a choice, beyond neurosis, being the refusal of this
choice, that every subject has the possibility of a choice for creating one.
That's the challenge beyond analysis.

Address for correspondence:

Vakgroep Psychoanalyse
University of Ghent
Henri Dunantlaan 2
B9000 Ghent
Belgium

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