The Fall of Fantasies A Lacanian Reading of Lack PDF

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The Fall of Fantasies: A Lacanian Reading of Lack

Mari Ruti
J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2008; 56; 483
DOI: 10.1177/0003065108319687
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ja Pa
Mari Ruti 56/2
THE FALL OF FANTASIES:

A LACANIAN READING OF LACK
The purpose of this article is to explain to a non-Lacanian audience the

broad philosophical foundations of Lacanian theory, particularly the rela-
tionship that Lacan draws between the human subject’s ontological lack
and his or her creative capacities. In an effort to explain Lacan’s distaste
for psychoanalytic approaches aimed at strengthening the ego, the arti-
cle outlines the manner in which Lacan connects ego-driven fantasies to
the constriction of the subject’s psychic world. Lacan suggests that nar-
cissistic fantasies are misleadingly seductive because they—in occluding
the internal rifts and antagonisms of the subject’s being—alleviate his or
her anxieties about the contingent basis of existence. However, the illu-
sory sense of plenitude and self-presence that such fantasies provide pre-
vents the subject from effectively discerning the “truth” of his or her
desire, thereby holding him or her captive in socially conventional psy-
chic paradigms. In consequence, it is only the fall of the subject’s most
cherished fantasies that empowers him or her to pursue a degree of sub-
jective singularity. The article also considers the clinical implications of
Lacan’s theory of lack, including the ways in which the analyst’s lack
enhances the patient’s capacity to claim an increasingly autonomous and
multidimensional mode of encountering the world.
The question of the sovereign good is one that man has asked himself since time
immemorial, but the analyst knows that it is a question that is closed. Not only
doesn’t he have that sovereign good that is asked of him, but he also knows that
there isn’t any.
—JACQUES LACAN
I t is well known that Jacques Lacan incurred the wrath of generations

of ego psychologists when he asserted that they were hopelessly mis-
guided in their efforts to enhance their patients’ well-being by healing their
sentiments of inner lack and alienation. Lacan in fact insisted that psy-
choanalysts who endeavored to assuage the subject’s lack by reinforcing
Assistant Professor of Critical Theory, English Department, University of Toronto.

Submitted for publication June 11, 2007.
DOI: 10.1177/0003065108319687
483
Mari Ruti
the ego—by helping the subject feel more secure and flawlessly integrated—
had drastically misinterpreted the principal tenets of Freud’s teachings.
More specifically, Lacan suggested that every attempt to fill or cover over
the subject’s lack distances the subject further from the possibility of
accurately reading his desire.1 Because Lacan understood the ego to be a
defensive edifice that consistently resorts to misleading fantasy forma-
tions to shelter the subject from having to accept the realities of his psy-
chic predicament—particularly the idea that lack is a necessary foundation
of identity—he believed that any concession to the ego’s logic would
merely make the subject suffer more in the long run. Yielding to the
demands of the ego, in other words, would only perpetuate the deep-
seated fantasies that make it difficult for the subject to come to terms with
the uncanny idea that unfulfilled desire, and the resulting agitation, are
immanent to human existence. The objective of psychoanalysis, for
Lacan, was therefore not to overcome lack by strengthening the ego, but
rather to work through, and gradually break down, the elaborate fantasies
that keep the subject from effectively facing the challenges of his exis-
tential situation.2
The annoyance of Lacan’s adversaries was understandable. Not only
did Lacan seem to attack the (intuitively quite reasonable) coviction that
psychoanalysis is designed to make individuals feel better about their
lives, but his basic message—the idea that ultimately there is no cure for
the subject’s lack—sounded unnecessarily callous, particularly to ana-
lysts who had been trained to mend injured egos and to prop up the
subject’s narcissistic sense of himself as a lovable entity. However, it is
important to note that much of the tension between Lacan and his detrac-
tors stems from a fundamental misunderstanding regarding what he
1
To avoid the cumbersome repetition of “he or she,” I have chosen to alternate
these pronouns by section, so that the first section of this essay uses “he,” the second
“she,” the third “he,” etc.
2
I am aware that the term “existential” is not often used in Lacanian contexts.
However, I have chosen to employ it in this essay—along with some other decidedly
non-Lacanian terms, such as “identity,” “psychic potentiality,” and “self-actualization”—
because I believe they provide access to aspects of Lacanian theory that are rarely dis-
cussed. That is, even though Lacan himself seldom uses these terms, he is certainly
interested in the concepts we usually associate with them. The specificity of Lacanian
vocabulary should not obscure the fact that Lacan is frequently concerned with central
questions about human existence that have preoccupied philosophers from the beginning
of Western thought. At the same time, the “humanistic” tone of my paper should not be
interpreted to represent an attempt to deny the generally antihumanist thrust of Lacanian
theory.
484 Downloaded from http://apa.sagepub.com by William Stranger on April 1, 2009

means by lack. Rather than addressing lack as a consequence of specific

childhood traumas, abusive personal histories, or unfair and oppressive
social conditions—as many psychoanalytic schools do—Lacan is con-
cerned with lack as the ontological underpinning of human existence. Like
many phenomenological philosophers, Lacan is interested in what it means
for human beings to face their radical negativity or nothingness, and to
wrestle with the recognition that their lives are built on unstable ground.
To express the matter in more rigorously theoretical terms, Lacan endeav-
ors to understand the implications of the fact that human beings, by defin-
ition, fail to reconcile the concrete phenomenality of being with the abstract
ideality of Being, with the aspiration to attain absolute existential fullness.
It is precisely because Lacan is more interested in the psychic effects
of ontological lack than he is in the tragic consequences of traumatic life
histories that the suggestions that he offers to the subject’s predicament
tend to be incomprehensible—and may at times even seem irresponsi-
ble—to those who consider it the goal of psychoanalysis to work through
forms of psychic wounding that ensue from hurtful familial or socio-
cultural conditions. One might say that instead of regarding psycho-
analysis primarily as a therapeutic method, Lacan envisions it to be a
profoundly philosophical undertaking that has the potential to revise the
subject’s perception of the basic orientation of his existence.
By this I do not wish to suggest that Lacanian theory offers us advice
on how to live our lives. Indeed, if anything, Lacan argues that there is no
particular philosophy of existence that is capable of providing us the
answers we are looking for. He also allows for the possibility that we may
opt for injudicious or injurious life choices even after we have been
“properly” analyzed. However, I think that Lacan would not necessarily
disagree with the idea that psychoanalysis opens a space for the kind of
self-reflexivity that enables us to begin to ask the right kinds of questions
about what we deem important in the world, what kinds of persons we
wish to become, and what the best way of going about our lives might be.
For Lacan, such questions are often directed at unveiling the always
peculiar workings of our desire. As I will illustrate below, the purpose of
obliterating the subject’s illusory convictions about his ontological secu-
rity is to create an opening for the “truth” of his desire—for unconscious
communications that break through the deceptive edifices of the ego.
That is, if Lacan is so intent on tearing down the ego, it is because he
believes that only by so doing is it possible to release desire from the
tightly woven nexus of fantasy that depletes the subject’s psychic life.

485
Mari Ruti
And he believes that it is only on the ruins of the ego’s fantasmatic

defenses that the subject can begin to rebuild his existence along lines
that capture the momentum of his desire.
Within this general framework, the purpose of my essay is to examine
the relationship that Lacan establishes between the subject’s inner lack and
the creative potentialities of the psyche. More specifically, I would like to
explain why Lacan regards fantasy formations as an impediment to the
subject’s ability to live to the fullest of his potential. In an attempt to stay
accessible—and to honor the broadly philosophical ethos of this article—I
will for the most part limit my comments to Lacan’s early work, and more
particularly to a single aspect of his writings—namely, his contention that
narcissistic fantasies structure our sense of “reality” in limiting and life-
draining ways.3 On the one hand, such fantasies appease our anxiety about
the contingent foundations of existence. On the other—and precisely to the
extent that they replace the anxiety of uncertainty by a misleading sense of
certainty—they curtail what we find existentially possible. Consequently,
from a Lacanian viewpoint it is only the fall of our most treasured fan-
tasies—particularly of the idea that there is some “sovereign good” that is
capable of shielding us from the terror of living—that allows us to transi-
tion to a more imaginative and creatively engaged psychic economy. More
specifically, the disbanding of fantasies enables us to better listen to the
idiosyncratic particularity of our desire, and in so doing to begin to forge a
singular identity apart from the social conventions that seek to determine
the parameters of our being. In this way, it empowers us to renegotiate how
we relate to the world and, therefore, indirectly, how the world responds to
us; it allows us to rewrite our psychic destiny.
T H E G I F T O F C R E AT I V I T Y
One of Lacan’s greatest innovations was to connect the subject’s con-

stitutive negativity to language—to collective structures of signification
and meaning production—in ways that provide a pioneering hypothesis
of why and how lack comes to motivate the subject’s behavior in the
world. Lacan explains that the subject’s sense of lack results from the
processes of language acquisition that socialize the human infant into
3
I am currently writing a book, tentatively titled The Singularity of Being: Lacan’s
Legacies, that addresses key components of Lacan’s later work, particularly his con-
cepts of the ethical act, the sinthome, and traversing the fundamental fantasy. The present
paper for the most part addresses fantasy from the early Lacanian perspective.

cultural systems of meaning—what Lacan calls the symbolic order (or

“the Other”). Lacan proposes that prior to language acquisition, the child
is not yet fully capable of differentiating between herself and the people
and objects that surround her. She consequently possesses neither an
inner life nor a social awareness. For these to emerge—for the child to
enter a fully human existence—she needs to undergo a course of separa-
tion that teaches her to recognize herself as distinct from the world. Freud
theorized this course of separation in terms of the oedipus complex as a
mechanism that severs the child’s dependence on her surroundings by
forcing her to confront the painful fact that certain objects—most notably
the mother or the father—remain erotically forbidden. Lacan in turn
emphasizes that it is by internalizing the significatory codes of the
sociosymbolic world that the child becomes aware of cultural interdic-
tions and comes to regard herself as a discrete entity.
In Lacanian terms, the process of internalizing the codes of language
brings the child’s psychic life into being, making her capable of produc-
ing meaning. The same way as the oedipus complex transforms the child
from a creature ruled by primordial drives to one who enacts desire in
culturally intelligible ways, language acquisition inserts the child into the
world of collective rules and regulations (the world of the symbolic
Other). This process is necessary not only because it teaches the child to
conduct herself as a social and intersubjective entity, but also because it
gives rise to more complex and advanced levels of internal organization.
But it can also be coercive in the sense that it initiates the child into nor-
mative—and frequently quite unequal and repressive—collective struc-
tures, punishing all attempts to deviate from what the cultural order
deems right and proper. In other words, it carries the force of prohibition,
giving the child her first bitter taste of wanting what she cannot have. As
a consequence, it generates lack—the relentless sense of incompleteness
that characterizes human existence—as the melancholy underside of
social subjectivity.
Although most psychoanalytic approaches recognize the child’s sep-
aration from her caretakers and the surrounding world as a pivotal
moment of subject formation, they do not necessarily see lack as an
inevitable corollary of this moment. For many of them, the child emerges
from the process of individuation feeling wounded or insecure only if
something about this process goes awry—as, for instance, when the
parents for one reason or another fail to fully facilitate the child’s transi-
tion to social subjectivity. What makes Lacan distinctive—and what

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makes his theory disagreeable to some—is that he believes the child’s

awareness of lack and longing to be inescapable; it is, in a sense, the price
the child pays for being able to enter the social realm of meanings and
values. The signifier, insofar as it carries cultural prohibition, forces the
child to realize that she is not invincible, that she operates within a social
world that is much more powerful than she could ever be, and that there
are parts of that world that she does not have access to. In this fashion,
the signifier dispels the child’s primordial impression of being at one with
the world, causing an irreparable inner rift or division; the very develop-
mental course that empowers the child to materialize as a psychically
autonomous entity is also what makes her feel lacking and self-alienated.
That is, while language initiates an indispensable process of character
formation, it also causes a kind of symbolic castration. What is lost in this
process—what drains into the void of being—is the subject’s fantasy of
self-sufficiency. This unfortunate event, Lacan suggests, is what the
subject spends the rest of her life working through.4
Language generates lack. Lack in turn generates desire. While it is
common to assume that desire is what is most “natural” about our lives,
Lacan reveals the exact opposite, namely, that desire is a product of cul-
ture—a function of the ways in which the signifiers of the social order cut
into the child’s biological constitution. Indeed, a great deal has been made
of the fact that, in Lacanian terms, desire emerges through the mortification
and subordination of the body and of its unmediated enjoyment. The signi-
fier violates—mutilates and dismembers—the body as a “thing,” as a spon-
taneous nexus of drives that struggles for viability and fullness of being
beyond the symbolic system into which it is inserted. As Slavoj Žižek
(1992) explains: “Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary
sense of implying its absence—by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as
dead, although it is still present—but above all in the sense of its radical
dissection: the word ‘quarters’ the thing . . .” (p. 51).5 The signifier thus
carves out the body in specific ways in order to give rise to a particular
4
Here it is important to emphasize that the blissful sense of self-sufficiency and
“oceanic” plenitude that the subject imagines having lost is always a retroactive and
purely fantasmatic construct that is designed to conceal the fact that no such primor-
dial condition of wholeness and unmitigated enjoyment ever existed.
5
Žižek (1992) here paraphrases Lacan (1966a), who states: “Thus the symbol
manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing, and this death constitutes in the
subject the eternalization of his desire” (p. 104). I am in this instance using Sheridan’s
translation rather than the more recent one by Bruce Fink because in being more lit-
eral it highlights the similarities between Lacan’s statement and that of Žižek.

form of subjectivity and desire. It is in this sense that the subject is vulner-
able to what Lacan calls the “agency of the signifier.” The course of indi-
viduation initiated by the signifier may be necessary for the subject’s ability
to orient herself in the world, but it simultaneously colonizes the presym-
bolic body in ways that evacuate the body of its enjoyment.
Lacan hence underscores that it is only when the body’s immediate
enjoyment is sacrificed to the signifier that subjectivity as a site of social
energy and desire comes into being. This privileging of the “passion of the
signifier” (Lacan 1966b, p. 578) over the passion of the body is undoubtedly
problematic in light of the denigration of the body—and particularly of fem-
ininity as what always carries the indelible trace of the body—that has char-
acterized Western thought at least since Plato and Aristotle.6 Yet Lacan also
presents a poignant insight into the nature of subjectivity when he suggests
that it is insofar as the signifier causes the subject to desire that she is com-
pelled to turn outward—that she is persuaded to care about the contours and
unfolding of the surrounding world.7 After all, without desire, the subject
would have little curiosity regarding the things, objects, and beings that
inhabit and make up the world. In this sense, it is precisely the subject’s per-
sistent awareness of being less than fully realized that allows her to approach
the world as a space of possibility. That is, it is only insofar as the subject
experiences herself as needing something from the world that she has a con-
ception of the world as a place that can potentially meet her yearnings and
that might accordingly have something valuable to offer. In this manner, lack
gives rise to a self that is open to—and ravenous for—the world.
Because the world is filled with marvelous objects that entice the
subject’s desire—because the world, though certainly full of limitations
and deprivations, is also brimming with possibilities—the subject is
6
It is also something that Lacan appears to rethink and retract in his later work,
where he shifts his focus from the signifier to the body (from desire to the drives).
Generally speaking, one could say that in his early work (the seminars of the 1950s),
Lacan was primarily interested in the imaginary and the symbolic, whereas the later
seminars—beginning with Seminar VII (1959–1960)—display an increasing focus on
the real. As Lacan (1975–1976) announces in his seminar on the sinthome, “What is
important is the real. After having talked of the symbolic and the imaginary at length,
I have been led to ask myself what might in this conjunction be the real” (p. 107;
transl. mine). For a useful delineation of the different stages of Lacan’s thinking, see
Fink (1997, pp. 207–217), as well as Žižek (1989, p. 133).
7
By this I do not mean that the psyche has no relationship to the outside world
prior to the inception of signification, but merely that the signifier transforms this
relationship into one of desire.

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compelled to reach beyond her solipsistic universe; she is given the gift
of attentiveness. This turning outward is, moreover, not limited to an
encounter with already existing objects, but entails the strong aspiration to
bring new objects into being. Precisely because the subject can never attain a
state of wholeness, she is driven to look for substitutes that might compen-
sate for her sense of lack; she is motivated to invent objects and figures of
meaning that can, momentarily at least, ease and contain the discomfort of
alienation. In this paradoxical sense, rather than robbing the subject of inner
richness and vitality, lack is the underpinning of everything that is potentially
innovative about human life. Indeed, it is possible to envision the intricate
productions and fabrications of the human psyche as vehicles through which
the foundational lack of existence assumes a positive and tangible form. This
in turn suggests that the subject’s ability to dwell within lack without seek-
ing to close it—her ability to tarry with the negative, to express the matter in
Žižekian/Hegelian terms—is indispensable for her psychic aliveness. As a
matter of fact, such tarrying with the negative could be argued to be the great-
est of human achievements, for it transforms the terrors and midnights of the
spirit into symbolic formations, imaginative undertakings, and sites of deli-
cate beauty that make the world the absorbing and spellbinding place that
it—in its most auspicious moments, at least—can be.
The subject’s repeated attempts to fill the void within her being thus
give rise to a whole host of creative endeavors. Or in more Lacanian
terms, because the subject can never repossess the blissful state of pleni-
tude that she imagines having lost, because the subject cannot attain what
Lacan calls the Thing—the primordial object that promises unmediated
enjoyment—she is driven to look for surrogates that might compensate
for her lack. As Lacan observes in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–
1960), the Thing—which inevitably remains obscure and unattainable—
can be brought to life only through a series of substitutes. “If the Thing
were not fundamentally veiled,” Lacan explains, “we wouldn’t be in the
kind of relationship to it that obliges us, as the whole of psychic life is
obliged, to encircle it or bypass it in order to conceive it” (p. 118).
Precisely because the Thing is irrevocably lost, because it cannot be res-
urrected in any immediate form, the subject scurries from signifier to sig-
nifier to embody it obliquely. Like a potter who creates a vase around
emptiness, “creates it, just like the mythical creator, ex nihilo, starting
with a hole” (p. 121), the subject fashions a signifier, or an elaborate
string or sequence of signifiers, from the void of her being.8
8
Silverman (2000) analyzes this statement in World Spectators (pp. 45–49).

Lacan emphasizes that emptiness and fullness—the void of the vase and
the possibility of filling it—are introduced to the world simultaneously
(p. 120). In short, it is because we lack that we are prompted to create,
and it is through our creative activity that we manage, in an always nec-
essarily precarious manner, to withstand our lack. On this view, the sig-
nifier is not merely what mortifies the body, but also what empowers the
subject to move to an existential space beyond mortification by granting
her the gift of creativity.
In this context, it is important to specify that the translation of lack
into creativity is not a matter of dialectical redemption in the sense of giv-
ing the subject the ability to turn negativity into a definitive form of posi-
tivity. The subject’s attempts to name her lack are transient at best, giving
her access to no permanent meaning, no solid identity, no unitary narra-
tive of self-actualization. Any fleeting state of fullness or positivity that
the subject may be able to attain must always in the end dissolve back into
negativity; any endeavor to erase lack only gives rise to new instances of
lack. This implies that the process of filling lack must of necessity be con-
tinually renewed. It cannot be brought to an end for the simple reason that
the subject can never forge an object or a representation that would once
and for all seal this lack. However, far from being a hindrance to existen-
tial vitality, this intrinsic impossibility—the fact that every attempt to
redeem lack unavoidably falls short of its mark—is what allows us, over
and again, to take up the endless process of signifying beauty. As Kaja
Silverman (2000) advances, “Our capacity to signify beauty has no limits.
It is born of a loss which can never be adequately named, and whose con-
sequence is, quite simply, the human imperative to engage in a ceaseless
signification. It is finally this never-ending symbolization that the world
wants from us” (p. 146).
Lacan’s rendering of the subject’s relationship to the signifier is there-
fore complex in the sense that although he consistently accentuates the
subject’s relative helplessness vis-à-vis the larger systems of signification
that envelop her, he at the same time suggests that it is only by virtue of
her membership in the symbolic order that the subject possesses the
capacity to make meaning in the first place. The symbolic, in other words,
is not merely (or even primarily) a hegemonic structure that coerces the
subject into its law, but also—as I have endeavored to illustrate—the

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foundation of her creative potentialities.9 Lacan in fact insists that though

the subject can never master the signifier—let alone the signified—she
enjoys a certain degree of imaginative leeway with respect to it. He
describes this imaginative leeway as the subject’s capacity to make use of
the “poetic function” of language (1966b, p. 264)—the fact that language
by definition perpetuates the radical slipperiness, multiplicity, and poly-
valence of meaning. The same way that Heidegger (1971) connects cre-
ativity to the individual’s ability to dwell in the world in poetic rather than
merely instrumental ways, Lacan envisions creativity in terms of the
subject’s capacity to take a poetic approach to the world—an approach
that is content to play with meaning without attempting to arrest it in
unequivocal or transparent definitions.
T H E A P P E A L O F F A N TA S I E S
It is therefore only insofar as the subject is asked time and again to

reincarnate the lost Thing that he attains creative agency. However, it is
very difficult for the subject to conceive of his predicament in these
terms. The realization that the self is not synonymous with the world, but
rather a frail and faltering creature that needs to continuously negotiate
his position in the world, introduces an apprehensive state of want and
restlessness. Lacan explains that because lack is devastating to admit to—
because the subject tends to experience it as an aching wound rather than
as a humanizing principle that gives him access to creativity—he is pre-
disposed to seek solace in fantasy formations that allow him to mask and
ignore the reality of this lack. Such fantasies alleviate anxiety and fend
off the threat of fragmentation because they enable the subject to consider
himself as more unified and complete than he actually is; by concealing
the traumatic split or tear within the subject’s being, such fantasies lend
an always illusory form of consistency and meaning to his existence.
9
In Reinventing the Soul (Ruti 2006), I argue against the temptation to equate the
Lacanian symbolic with what Foucault means by hegemonic power. Although the
symbolic can be (and often is) harnessed for regulatory ends, it is not synonymous
with disciplinary power. By this I of course do not wish to discount that fact that there
are specific signifiers—signifiers that carry the unequal effects of power—that wound
particular subjects, that cut up subjects in devastating ways. What is important, in this
context, is to ask who in our culture tends to be denigrated by signifiers and who has
access to their creative potential.

Lacan hypothesizes that the origin of such narcissistic fantasies of

plenitude and psychic salvation resides in what he labels the mirror stage.
Lacan posits that during the preverbal, imaginary phase the child, in per-
ceiving his image in a mirror (or perhaps in the adoring eyes of some care-
taker), mistakes the apparent coherence of the image for himself; unable
to distinguish between himself (as a physical, psychological, or ontologi-
cal entity) and his image, the child is mesmerized by, and comes to iden-
tify with, the deceptive flawlessness of this image. This is Lacan’s version
of the ancient myth of Narcissus, who, upon catching his reflection in a
pool of water, becomes so hopelessly enamored of his own loveliness that
he is incapable of tearing himself away from his image. In the myth, the
fact that Narcissus confuses the image in the pool with himself leads to his
demise. Likewise, Lacan implies that the love that the adult subject feels
for his romanticized image—an image that serves as a tantalizing token of
the wholeness that the subject so ardently covets—signifies a certain kind
of psychic death: the death of the creative potentialities that could be cul-
tivated through an acceptance of lack as the basis of existence.
Fantasies—even in their narcissistic form—are of course not a purely
negative phenomenon. From time to time, we all need mirrors—moments
when others complete, recognize, or witness us in idealizing, indulgent,
and loving ways. This is the case particularly for those who have been
narcissistically wounded. As Lewis Kirshner (2004) observes, for indi-
viduals whose early lives were characterized by deficiencies of basic care
and recognition, and who in consequence find it arduous to sustain a
viable subject position, compassionate mirroring may be essential for
undoing a skewed perception of worthlessness. In such instances, mirror-
ing is a benign form of empathy that responds to the subject’s legitimate
demand for recognition and narcissistic repair.10 One might in fact argue
that in cases that involve the forceful robbing of the subject’s sense of
self-esteem, it may be necessary to reconstitute the ego before embarking
upon a critique of its ontological status. That is, Lacan’s adamant resis-
tance to the narcissistic tendencies of the ego may make it difficult to
appreciate situations where the ego has been so profoundly injured by
abusive or oppressive interpersonal relationships that its capacity for nar-
cissistic fantasies has been destroyed. Although Lacan is correct in being
suspicious of the ego’s capacity to deceive the subject into thinking that
10
For excellent discussions of narcissistic injury, see Lynne Layton (1999) and
Kelly Oliver (2001, 2004).

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he is more coherent or powerful than he actually is, his theory is less

immediately useful when it comes to cases where the subject is led to
believe in his own absolute insignificance. This explains why Lacanian
theory is not always particularly relevant when it comes to understanding
and treating the aftereffects of traumatic life histories.11
Perhaps even more fundamentally, it is possible to argue that there is
no “reality” that is not always already a form of fantasy: that fantasy is all
we have. In other words, the very distinction between “reality” and “fan-
tasy” is in many ways an artificial one, reminiscent of an Enlightenment
worldview—one that believed in the power of the rational mind to tell fact
from fiction—that has been seriously undermined in recent decades by
postmodern theorizing. That is, the belief that we could ever relate to the
world objectively, as it “really is,” has itself been discredited as a fantasy
that occludes the recognition that the ways we perceive and interpret the
world always necessarily reflect the value systems within which we oper-
ate. In effect, while the Enlightenment worldview distinguished between
“reality” and our more or less successful efforts to represent it, contempo-
rary theorists recognize—as Nietzsche already did—that our very attempts
to represent reality invariably shape the form of this reality. By this I do not
mean to say that there exists no reality independent of human representa-
tions, but merely that we do not possess any immediate or unmediated
access to that reality; since we understand the world around us only
through the conceptual frameworks, labels, and systems of thought that we
11
I think it important to acknowledge that Lacanian theory is not always immedi-
ately applicable to instances of psychic abjection that are circumstantial rather than
ontological. The notion of learning to live with one’s lack or insecurity takes on a
wholly different valence when that lack or insecurity emerges from past abuse, inter-
subjective victimization, or social oppression. Indeed, recognizing the difference
between ontological and circumstantial forms of lack is valuable because it helps
clarify the distinction between deconstructive forms of psychoanalysis—such as
Lacanian analysis—on the one hand and more restorative approaches on the other.
The latter tend to work with circumstantial forms of lack, whereas the former often
focus on lack as an ontological state. This means that while restorative approaches
tend to rely on processes of self-narrativization that empower the subject to resist
being “named” by wounding external forces, and that allow him over time to rewrite
his traumatic past along more affirmative lines, deconstructive approaches aspire to
take apart the subject’s narratives so as to expose their fantasmatic and illusory sta-
tus. That is, while restorative approaches seek to capitalize on the power of narratives
to facilitate a constructive reclaiming of the subject’s history, deconstructive theories
tend to question the very legitimacy of his narratives. (My use of the term “decon-
structive” here should not be interpreted to mean that I equate Lacanian theory with
that of Derrida, but merely that I think that Lacan’s approach to narrativization is
deconstructive in the broad sense of the term.)
impose on this world, there is no way to know what this world might be
like outside of our endeavors to comprehend it.
The fact that our understanding of the world—not to mention our
sense of ourselves—can be posited to be a fantasmatic construct does not
mean that we do not experience it as real. In other words, the idea that
something is constructed should not be confused with the idea that it pos-
sesses no power over us or that it somehow lacks psychic resonance, for
to the degree that fantasmatic constructs over time come to take on the
force of reality for us, they function as a means of world-constitution that
“actualize” the world for us. Talking about the molding of subjectivity in
particular, Anne Anlin Cheng (2001) observes that fantasy is not an activ-
ity undertaken by an already fully formed subject, but rather (in part at
least) what allows the subject to engage in the process of fashioning his
identity in the first place. This is to say that fantasy can be an essential
vehicle for the crafting of the kind of identity that feels viable and worth-
while. In Cheng’s words, fantasy is a medium of self-narrativization that
“constitutes the subject’s sense of integrity and hence his/her potential for
agency.” Fantasy, in this sense, is not the opposite of reality, but rather
what brings reality into being; it is “what authenticates realness, what
makes reality real” (p. 120).
If fantasies are how we constitute not only the world, but also our own
sense of self, they can hardly be considered exclusively an error of judg-
ment, or a defect of being, that needs to be eliminated. Indeed, the realiza-
tion that what we take for reality is always a form of fantasy calls into
question our very desire to find a foothold “beyond” or “outside” fantasy.
Such a quest might in fact be argued to be indicative of precisely the kind
of search for secure epistemological foundations that Lacan actively
shuns. On this view, the idea that we could be freed from the mystifica-
tions of fantasy is itself a drastic type of mystification. What is more, it
could be argued to be a mystification that keeps us from appreciating the
various ways in which fantasies can enhance our existence by injecting
splashes of passion or enchantment into our otherwise humdrum lives; it
prevents us from discerning that fantasies are not only delusions that derail
us from the concrete realities of our lives, but also, potentially at least, a
means of disclosing previously unknown realms of meaning.
An imaginative approach to the world—one that actively engages the
fantasmatic nature of reality rather than concealing or suppressing it—
may well reveal dimensions of the world that under normal circum-
stances remain hidden or marginalized; it may bring neglected aspects of

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the world into focus for us. As a matter of fact, insofar as fantasies are
always linked to our (conscious or unconscious) wishes and longings,
they render the world more desirable to us, with the consequence that we
scrutinize it more carefully, with a heightened degree of attentiveness to
details and attributes that we might otherwise overlook. As Stephen
Mitchell (2003) explains, taking fantasy seriously engenders “a more
complex understanding of things, others, and ourselves, as offering many
facets and considerable ambiguity, coming alive always, necessarily, par-
tially through acts of imagination” (p. 107). That is, when ordinary reality
is perceived as a construction rather than as an objective fact, fantasy can
no longer be thought of as what contaminates reality, but should instead
be regarded as a process of bringing the world alive for us in a particularly
vibrant fashion. According to this vision, “reality” is a fantasy that we
elaborate on an increasingly intricate level during our entire lifetime.
T H R O U G H T H E LO O K I N G - G L A S S
When it comes to fantasy formations, it is therefore essential to dis-

tinguish between (1) unconscious fantasies that curb our existential
options and (2) imaginative and creative fantasies that allow us to observe
the world from novel angles. Lacan’s assault on narcissistic fantasies is
directed at the former, whereas his commentary on the poetic potentiali-
ties of language could be argued to relate to the latter. I will return to the
poetic aspects of language at the end of this essay. For now, it is worth
repeating that the main reason Lacan resists narcissistic fantasies is that
they tend to organize our psychic “reality” in ways that disguise all clefts,
ruptures, and antagonisms within that reality. They make our identities
appear both reliable and immediately readable to us. As a result, they all
too easily lead us to believe that we can come to know ourselves in a
definitive fashion, thereby preventing us from perceiving that “knowing”
one version of ourselves may well function as a defense against other,
perhaps less reassuring, versions.
In the Lacanian scenario, narcissistic fantasies deepen our confusion
about the nature of our existence by imposing a false coherence where we
should discern a complex and ever evolving pattern of open-ended possi-
bility. As Eric Santner (2001) explains, they deform our lives by freezing
our being “into a schema, a distinctive ‘torsion’ or spin that colors/distorts
the shape of our universe, how the world is disclosed to us,” and it is pre-
cisely this torsion that “sustains our sense of the consistency of the world

and our place in it” (pp. 39–40). Fantasies, in other words, restrict our
movement in the world, holding us captive to the idea that the basic struc-
ture of our lives is determined in advance rather than constituted in the
process of living. In this manner, they keep us from our own aliveness.
I have proposed that lack gives rise to ever renewed feats of symbol-
ization. The fantasmatic attempt to deny lack, in contrast, prevents the
subject from riding the signifier in agile and innovative ways, for it limits
meaning production to those forms that accord with the worldview pro-
moted by the subject’s foundational fantasies. In this fashion, fantasies
prevent the subject from recognizing that it is only when she comes to
accept the absolute alterity—the radical and at times terrifying alienness—
of her being that she is able to truly participate in the unpredictable
rhythm of the world (that she is able to begin to weave the threads of her
life into a psychically supple tapestry). That is, the subject who affirms
lack understands—in however inchoate a manner—that lack is not merely
a daunting or sterile void, but the precondition of her capacity for imagi-
native living, including her ability to ask constructive questions about her
life. Such questions do not give the subject access to the ultimate meaning
of her existence, yet it may well be the simple act of asking them—what
Jonathan Lear (2004) describes as the subject’s “living engagement”
(p. 84) with them—that allows her to grow in psychic depth and density.
Indeed, one could argue that it is precisely the fact that there are no fixed
or definitive answers to such questions—that the subject is invited to enter
into a continuous and ever renewed process of grappling with them—that
most intensely shapes her as an individual.
One could even say that the act of passing through the looking-glass
of narcissistic fantasies—of dismantling life-arresting existential mirages—
is one way to understand what it means to rewrite one’s fate. Lear (2004)
points out that unconscious fantasies that organize the subject’s life in
obstinately repetitive ways are so damaging in part because they present
a confining set of life possibilities as though they were the only possibil-
ities that the subject possesses (p. 205). Lear specifies that a person dri-
ven by such a repetition compulsion treats her particular version of the
world as the only conceivable world in the sense that she cannot even
begin to imagine how she could ever change things for the better
(pp. 48–49). She is in fact more than a little intimidated by alternative
possibilities. According to this account, “any purported field of possibili-
ties is always a somewhat restricting fantasy of what is possible in human

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life” (Lear 2000, p. 161). It is as if our psychic lives were the sum total
of our bad habits in the sense that what we unconsciously assume to be
the boundaries of our lives ends up curtailing the range of our existential
options for the simple reason that it consistently directs us to certain sit-
uations, behaviors, and interpersonal relations while steering us away
from others. Or, to express the matter in more Lacanian terms, it dictates
how we seek and obtain pleasure in the world, thereby determining the
very shape of our enjoyment. This is a perfect manifestation of what
Roberto Harari (2002) calls “a destiny compulsion” (p. 120).
If fantasies perpetuate obstinate unconscious patterns of behavior,
the aim of Lacanian analysis—and perhaps of psychoanalysis more gen-
erally speaking—is to loosen the grip of such fantasies in order to create
space for alternative life plots and directions, and in so doing to expand
the subject’s repertoire of existential options. Analysis deliberately cre-
ates fissures in the individual’s dearest and most trenchantly reenacted
fantasies so as to provide an opening for a more imaginatively lithe sense
of life’s potentialities. The subject who is used to operating in the world
according to a predetermined set of possibilities—whose relationship to
the world consistently displays patterns of being punished, suffocated,
persecuted, or disenchanted, for instance—is gradually persuaded to
revise the parameters of what she finds conceivable so that fresh kinds of
thoughts, actions, and modes of relating become plausible. Lear (2004)
describes this process of existential expansion as one of opening up “the
possibility for new possibilities” (p. 112). Santner (2005) in turn posits
that breaking the spell of fantasies—intervening in the “hypnotic com-
mandments” that generate eccentric yet strangely binding libidinal
impasses—means to step fully into the cadence of life (what he evoca-
tively calls “the midst of life”) and in this manner to enter into a more ani-
mated and multidimensional psychic economy (p. 51). That is, the
process of releasing psychic energies that are bound up in the unyielding
encasing of fantasies converts these energies into “more life,” thereby
making them available to more elastic psychic enactments (p. 40).
From a specifically Lacanian perspective, learning to live without the
kinds of fantasies that protect us from our lack entails an epistemological
leap to a vastly different existential attitude. In particular, Lacan invites
us to acknowledge that regardless of all the busy and clamorous activity
that we habitually undertake in order to suppress or ignore our lack, deep
down we know that there will always be moments when it breaks out into
the open with the piercing clarity and sadness of a foghorn. No matter

how many layers of fantasy we wrap around this hollow in our hearts, it
reverberates through us like a muted but persistent echo that carries the
uncanny messages of what most terrifies us about ourselves. For Lacan, our
existential assignment is to heed that echo, to withstand moments when
nothing fills the void, and to work through the realization that neither we
nor the world—nor any of the objects of this world—can ever live up to the
perfection of our fantasies. Our task, in other words, is to learn to endure
the sharp points of existence without being irrevocably devastated.
L A C K I N T H E A N A LY T I C S PA C E
We may now be in a better position to understand (even if we do not fully

endorse) Lacan’s critique of ego psychology. If Lacan scorns the attempts
of ego psychologists to shore up the subject’s ego, it is because he
believes that they have gotten things entirely backward: instead of help-
ing the subject accept lack as constitutive of subjectivity, they intensify
his existential confusion—not to mention desperation—by playing into
and reinforcing his narcissistic fantasies. Lacan deems this approach to
be deeply flawed in that it hastens to prematurely close the void within
the subject’s being instead of fostering the imaginative possibilities that
arise from this void; it promises the end of alienation, rather than teach-
ing the subject to resourcefully live with this alienation; and it dilutes the
subject’s power to mobilize the signifier in ways that would add creative
vitality to his existence. Such a tactic, Lacan suggests, is always to some
extent dishonest in that it tends to leave the subject worse off than before.
The “solution” that ego psychology offers to the subject’s sense of lack
is, for Lacan, therefore merely the highest manifestation of the problem:
it thwarts, rather than advances, the subject’s capacity for creative living.
Lacan may have aimed his indignation at ego psychology for largely
idiosyncratic reasons—such as his vehement dislike of what he saw as a
specifically American tendency to turn psychoanalysis into a tool of social
conformity—but his commentary on the dangers of ignoring lack remains
highly relevant to contemporary debates about the purpose of clinical
practice. Mitchell Wilson (2006) has recently noted that Anglo-American
clinicians are not, generally speaking, used to thinking about lack in the
Lacanian sense, with the result that they are likely to overlook its genera-
tive potential. More specifically, Anglo-American clinical practice tends
to be biased toward presence and plenitude (the filling of lack) in the sense
that analysts are tempted—and sometimes even feel compelled—to make

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sense of their patients’ dilemmas by providing accurate, meaningful, and

seamless interpretations. Wilson points out that it is not at all clear that
such affirmative giving of meaning to the patient always serves a curative
function, for it runs the risk of signaling to the patient that interpretive clo-
sure is more important than his capacity to dynamically inhabit a space of
existential uncertainty and incompleteness. Or—to frame that matter in
terms that resonate with my discussion of fantasy—it holds the patient
captive in comforting fantasy formations that radically constrict and dis-
tort the possibilities of his life.
Wilson moreover stresses that the analyst’s attempt to meet the patient’s
lack with a reassuring display of presence and plenitude obscures the ways
in which the process of analysis is often moved forward by the analyst’s
lack—by his various mistakes, misrecognitions, and misinterpretations. It
occludes the fact that “missing the patient” (p. 401)—getting the patient
wrong—is not only an unavoidable dimension of analysis, but is essential to
its successful unfolding.
Wilson is careful to specify that he is discussing lack in the Lacanian
(ontological) sense rather than in the sense of early childhood trauma and
deprivation—that he is interested in the positive and facilitative effects of
lack (p. 412). As I have said, confusing the Lacanian notion of lack with
childhood trauma is what makes it so difficult for many non-Lacanians to
envision lack as anything but a deficit or a form of dispossession. And
indeed, some of the commentators on Wilson’s article read his privileging
of lack over presence and plenitude as an indication that he regards analytic
interpretation as “necessarily unfulfilling” (Goldberg 2006, p. 431), advo-
cates the “futility of interpretation” (Litowitz 2006, p. 444), and “makes a
pathology of the analyst’s wish to understand the patient” (Reed 2006,
p. 448). In short, these commentators accuse Wilson of denigrating the prac-
tice of interpretation, and of advancing an analytic ethos whereby the ana-
lyst forgoes his responsibility to the patient by—as Litowitz puts it—doing
“as little as possible” (p. 440). That is, Wilson’s commentators seem to
assume that an emphasis on lack leads automatically to an impoverishment
of the analytic space (so that there is no more interpretation, no insight, and
no support, but merely the callousness of an analyst who no longer cares).
Yet, from a Lacanian perspective—the perspective I have endeavored to
elucidate—it is immediately obvious that Wilson’s point is exactly the
opposite, namely, that the recognition of lack, including the lack of the ana-
lyst, opens up a wealth of interpretive and existential possibilities.
A careful reading of Wilson’s essay reveals that far from advocating
the analyst’s interpretive indifference or complacency, he is interested in
the preconditions of the kind of analytic (interpretive) space that is con-

ducive to the patient’s autonomy and ability to claim his own voice. In
other words, Wilson is not arguing against the value of interpretation, but
merely calling our attention to the kind of interpretations that are so quick
to provide meaning that they foreclose the patient’s capacity to fully enter
into an open-ended process of meaning production; such interpretations
run the risk of stifling or suffocating the patient by making it impossible
for him to actively engage the creative potentialities of the signifier. In
contrast, the analyst who foregrounds his own lack—who allows this lack
to become visible and accessible through the mistakes that he makes—
exhibits an attitude of deep generosity in the sense that he invites the
patient to become a co-creator (an equal collaborator in the production)
of meaning. Paradoxically enough, the analyst’s mistakes, by revealing
that his interpretations are not the only possible ones, serve as the foun-
dation of a certain kind of interpretive plenitude by providing an opening
for the patient’s attempts to name his own world.12
Wilson’s commentators are correct in positing that his notion of lack
is too diffuse in that it includes everything from the subject’s ontological
lack—lack in the Lacanian sense that I have outlined—to the analyst’s
mistakes in missing the patient. Yet Wilson’s intuition about the connec-
tion between ontological lack and missing the patient is quite subtle, for
he implies that insofar as missing the patient showcases the analyst as a
fallible and less-than-perfect (i.e., lacking) subject, it familiarizes the
patient with the idea that lack is a universal condition of human existence
that can be tolerated and worked with (rather than a shameful personal
failing that must be fantasmatically occluded).13 After all, if the analyst—
who, as Lacan speculated, functions for the patient as the subject who is
12
Kirshner (2006) expresses this quite eloquently: “Once we accept this state of
affairs, the nature of analytic work changes in major ways. No longer are we present
to interpret the historical or psychic truth of the patient’s suffering, and no longer are
we authorized to act as observers of psychic processes that will eventually reveal their
secrets to us. Instead we are peculiar participants and guardians of a space in which a
reconfiguration or a new set of articulations of self with Other can take shape” (p. 427).
13
Here it is relevant to recall Lacan’s insistence (1966b) that there is no Other of the
Other—no final arbitrator of the Other’s discourse (p. 688). By this statement, Lacan
wishes to emphasize that the Other is haunted by lack and inconsistency as much as the
subject is—that the Other’s reliability is ultimately as illusory as the subject’s own. That
is, in the same way that there is a lack in the subject that keeps him from being identical
with himself, there is a lack in the Other that prevents it from ever becoming a closed
totality that could convincingly legitimate the ideology that it espouses. Insofar as
Lacanian analysis places the analyst in the position of the Other, Lacan’s statements about
the lack in the Other are directly relevant to Wilson’s argument about the analyst’s lack.

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supposed to know, who is supposed to hold the secret of the patient’s hap-
piness—reveals that he in fact does not always know, it becomes very dif-
ficult for the patient to entertain the fantasy of omnipotent and invincible
subjectivity.14 This suggests that insofar as the analyst is able to reveal
himself as fallible without at the same time losing his ability to be a com-
petent analyst, the patient gradually internalizes one of the most valuable
lessons of Lacanian analysis, namely, that lack does not necessarily
undermine one’s claim on subjectivity and aliveness; the analyst’s capac-
ity to de-idealize himself, as it were, gives the patient the “permission” to
embrace the notion that leading a reasonable life does not presuppose
seamless psychic integration. This is an important step in facilitating the
patient’s ability to puncture the narcissistic fantasies that are designed to
shield him from his lack.
To press the matter a step further, one could argue that to the extent
that the analyst is able to gracefully handle moments when he misses the
patient—to the extent that he manages to weave his mistakes into the
evolving texture of the analytic fabric—he gestures to the patient that
making a mistake is a potentially valuable opening to fresh insights and
possibilities. By using his mistakes to access new, perhaps previously
overlooked, interpretive directions, the analyst conveys the idea that
mistakes—and by extension, lack (as a kind of ontological “mistake”)—
are something to be actively and productively grappled with rather than
an existential disaster to be fled from or brushed aside. This is a specifi-
cally Lacanian way to understand what it means, within the analytic con-
text, to activate the possibility for new possibilities. And it is for this
reason that, to borrow from Wilson, the analyst’s “acting interpretively”
(p. 399) is ultimately far more important than the content—the accuracy
or inaccuracy—of his interpretations.
THE SINGULARITY OF BEING
At bottom, what is at stake here is the patient’s capacity to assert what is

singular about her being. Fink (1997) has underscored that one of the
aspirations of Lacanian analysis is to facilitate the subject’s departure
14
In this context, it is worth emphasizing that Lacan is adamant that it is not the
analyst’s job to provide answers to the patient’s existential questions or to pretend to
have such answers. Insofar as the analyst plays the part of the big Other, the point of
analysis is, precisely, to dispel the patient’s fantasy that the Other “knows.”

from ideals and configurations of thought that have been inculcated

within her psyche by the various authority figures that surround her from
birth; the goal of Lacanian analysis is to allow the subject to think and
act without being overly dependent on the views and opinions of others
(pp. 33–38). In this context, the analyst’s missing the patient—not to men-
tion her capacity to create an analytic space within which the patient can
become an active co-creator of meaning—enhances the patient’s ability to
assume responsibility for her own beliefs, passions, and unique perspec-
tive.15 As Wilson accentuates, the analyst’s missing the patient “allows the
patient to take up his or her own place, to articulate in increasingly clear
ways a position in his or her own individual voice” (p. 401).
A more explicitly Lacanian way of expressing the matter is to say
that analysis invites the subject to take responsibility for the particularity
of her desire. That is, the subject is asked to distinguish between the
“truth” of her desire and the desire of the big Other (including the desire
of the analyst as one powerful incarnation of the Other). Lacan in fact
suggests that when the subject is estranged from her desire—when she
allows herself to be overrun by the desire of the Other—her existence
feels empty, apathetic, and devoid of meaning; when in the throes of such
life-deadening conformity, the subject goes through the motions of life in
a defensive manner, sacrificing the integrity of her desire for the conve-
nience of an easily classifiable social identity.16
Against this backdrop, the purpose of liberating oneself from fan-
tasies of plenitude and full self-presence is to access the unique frequency
of one’s desire. Such fantasies obscure this frequency to the extent that
they mask the lack within the subject’s being that gives rise to desire in
the first place. As a result, when these fantasies dissolve, the insistent
15
It could of course be argued that the subject’s beliefs, passions, and perspective
are never her “own,” but rather are socioculturally determined. Yet I would say that
even if it is the case that subjectivity can never be divorced from larger symbolic sys-
tems, the subject retains the capacity to actively negotiate her position within such
systems. One might describe such subjectivity as socially informed (as opposed to
socially complacent).
16
Lacan (1966b) characterizes the predicament of such a subject as follows: “He
will make an effective contribution to the collective undertaking in his daily work and
will be able to occupy his leisure time with all the pleasures of a profuse culture
which—providing everything from detective novels to historical memoirs and from
educational lectures to the orthopedics of group relations—will give him the where-
withal to forget his own existence and death, as well as to misrecognize the particu-
lar meaning of his life in false communication” (p. 282).

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pulse of desire becomes more audible, more determinedly solicitous of

the subject’s response. This implies that the subject who manages to work
through her fantasies is, hypothetically at least, better able to distinguish
between the voice of the Other—whatever masquerades as her desire—
and the actuality of that desire. Such a subject is able to enter into the
ongoing process of fashioning a singular identity in accordance with the
complexity of her desire.
This is where the notion of poetic language becomes relevant, for, as
we have seen, it is the signifier that carries our desire. Indeed, it is only as
subjects of signification that we are capable of desire in the first place. In
this context, it is important to repeat that even though Lacan regards lan-
guage as something that all too easily deprives us of singularity (of the
specificity of our desire) by subjecting us to sociodiscursive hegemonies,
he admits that the signifier does not always coincide with the symbolic
order—that the signifier does not invariably speak or support the discourse
of the Other.17 In effect, when commenting on the strangely inspired writ-
ing practice of James Joyce, Lacan explicitly asserts that language chal-
lenges normative structures of signification as much as it reinforces them,
and that to some extent one has the capacity to invent the language one
uses; one has the power to activate the poetic function of language. As
Lacan (1975–1976) observes, “This assumes or implies that one chooses
to speak the language that one effectively speaks. . . . One creates a lan-
guage insofar as one at every instant gives it a sense, one gives it a little
nudge, without which language would not be alive” (p. 133; transl. mine).
Lacan therefore concedes that although language functions as an
impersonal structure into which we are introduced at birth, we are never-
theless capable of giving it a little (poetic) “nudge” that transforms it into
something uniquely ours—that conveys something about the “truth” of
our desire. That is, the fact that each of us has the power—however limited—
to push aside congealed forms of meaning gives us a measure of creative
freedom. In other words, even though being compelled to participate in a
common symbolic system on one level deprives us of personal distinc-
tiveness, on another level it offers us the possibility of carving out a sin-
gular place within that order; we can particularize or personalize the
17
Here one should recall the distinction that Lacan makes in “The Function and
Field of Speech” (1966b) between “empty” or “false” speech that fails to carry the
subject’s desire, and “full” or “true” speech that manages to convey the specificity of
this desire.

discourse we are asked to inhabit.18 This is one way to comprehend what

it might mean to insist on the possibility of agency—on the fact that we
are not merely subservient to hegemonic social structures, but can and do
have an impact on these structures; it clarifies why we manage from time
to time to rearticulate and reorganize social reality.
Because the cultural order produces socially intelligible subjects by
assimilating them into its disciplinary machinery, there of necessity exists
a constant tension between our (largely fantasmatic) conception of our-
selves as individuals who possess at least the potential for exceptionality
and our recognition that we are always already dominated by a social
order that bars us from exceptionality—that in fact sells its own normative
definition of what it means to be exceptional, thereby eradicating any
“genuine” possibility for exceptionality. No wonder, then, that we tend to
find narcissistic fantasies more appealing than the reality principle, for
such fantasies provide us, precisely, with an inflated sense of our excep-
tionality. However, as I have emphasized, the illusion of uniqueness that
such fantasies offer is in many ways the very antithesis of creative agency,
for it merely reflects what is most stubborn and mechanical about our
unconscious ways of relating to the world. In contrast, the signifier—the
always peculiar ways in which we take up cultural meaning—provides an
authentic opening for the emergence of psychic distinctiveness. On this
view, it is not only how we die—or face the prospect of our mortality, as
phenomenologists like to say—but also how we inhabit language that sin-
gularizes us, that gives our identities an idiosyncratic resonance.
Our singularity—our capacity to name our desire—is therefore in
many ways a function of the various creative ways in which we manage
to breathe life into the signifier.19 This is precisely why—as Wilson
18
One could say that ordinary language—language that conforms to the hege-
monic ideologies and practices of the symbolic Other—tends to distance us from our
singularity by propelling us toward social generality. This is because it does not con-
tain enough elements that are able to resist such generality. Poetic (inventive, artistic)
usages of language, in contrast, by definition steer us away from generality and
toward singularity because their very purpose is to challenge—or at the very least to
offer alternatives to—habitual conventions of meaning production. To the degree that
poetic language aspires to alter our usual perception of how language functions, it
automatically creates an opportunity for new forms of meaning, and consequently,
potentially at least, for singular sorts of subjective enactments.
19
Žižek and Santner have both linked subjective singularity to those aspects of the
self that manage to defy social classification—that do not lend themselves to sym-
bolic translation or domestication. Their compelling arguments are unfortunately
beyond the scope of this paper.

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emphasizes—it is so important for the analyst to forge an interpretive

space in which the patient can begin to actively claim the signifier. The
patient who is able to assert a degree of interpretive authority—who is, as
it were, able to hold her own vis-à-vis the analyst as a representative of
the big Other—over time grows less afraid of the Other’s judgments; she
becomes increasingly capable of independent deliberation and action. By
this I do not mean to imply that the relationship between analyst and
patient is inherently antagonistic. Rather, I am merely suggesting that an
analysis that does not offer the patient access to the innovative (poetic)
aspects of language will render invisible the patient’s desire, thereby fail-
ing to cultivate her singularity.
Lacanian analysis could be argued to be a practice of negotiating the
inevitable tension between being a generic subject (being subjected to the
symbolic order) and being a singular creature (having a unique identity that
somehow surpasses the parameters of that order). We are of course always
both at once, but it is only as singular creatures that we feel fully engaged in
our lives. What I have tried to demonstrate is that, in Lacanian terms, the more
we are able to liberate ourselves from the spell of fantasies—including the fan-
tasy of the omnipotent analyst (Other) who is able to fill our lack—the better
our chances for singularity. The act of accepting our lack20—and of develop-
ing a measure of self-reflexivity with regard to the meanings of the Other—
empowers us to move from unconscious repetition of inert existential patterns
to a more active and life-enriching (poetic) connection with the world.
Strangely enough, although the Other does not possess answers to
our life-defining questions, the significatory resources that it makes avail-
able to us enable us to devise the kinds of answers that we can—always
tentatively and provisionally—live with. This is precisely why the task of
the Lacanian analyst is not to offer definitive answers to the patient’s
questions, but merely to provide an analytic space where it becomes pos-
sible for the patient to arrive at singular kinds of answers. One could in
20
Žižek (1992) argues forcefully that the lack to be assumed by the subject is not her
own, but rather that of the Other. As he postulates, “one can only wonder at the fact that
even some Lacanians reduce psychoanalysis to a kind of heroic assumption of a neces-
sary, constitutive sacrifice. . . . Lacan is as far as possible from such an ethic of heroic
sacrifice: the lack to be assumed by the subject is not its own but that of the Other, which
is something incomparably more unbearable” (p. 58). I would maintain, however, that in
the end these two scenarios amount to the same thing: accepting the fact that the Other
is lacking implies coming to terms with the fact that the Other does not possess the
answers to one’s existential predicament—that the Other cannot fill one’s lack.

fact say that the process of becoming a singular subject, from a distinc-
tively Lacanian point of view, is first and foremost a matter of knowing
that even though the question of the “sovereign good” is from the outset
closed, questions that sustain us as creatures of becoming and psychic
potentiality—questions pertaining to desire, creativity, and the passion of
self-actualization, for example—are ones that can be closed only by our
own (non)actions.
REFERENCES
CHENG, A.A. (2001). The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation,

and Hidden Grief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
FINK, B. (1997). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory
and Technique. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
GOLDBERG, A. (2006). A lament about lack: Commentary on Wilson. Journal
of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:429–433.
HARARI, R. (2002). How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the Final
Lacan, transl. L. Thurston. New York: Other Press.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1971). Poetry, Language, Thought, transl. A. Hofstadter. New
York: Harper & Row.
KIRSHNER, L.A. (2004). Having a Life: Self-Pathology after Lacan. Hillsdale,
NJ: Analytic Press.
——— (2006). The concept of the negative in psychoanalysis: Commentary
on Wilson. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
54:423–428.
LACAN, J. (1959–1960). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII. The Ethics
of Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, transl. D. Porter. New York: Norton,
1992.
——— (1966a). Écrits: A Selection, transl. A. Sheridan. New York: Norton,
1977.
——— (1966b). Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, transl.
B. Fink. New York: Norton, 2006.
——— (1975–1976), Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan: Livre XXIII. Le
Sinthome, ed. J.-A. Miller. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2005.
LAYTON, L. (1999). Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? Clinical Practice
Meets Postmodern Gender Theory. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
LEAR, J. (2000). Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
——— (2004). Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony. New York:
Other Press.

507
Mari Ruti
LITOWITZ, B.E. (2006). Where does nothing come from? Commentary on

Wilson. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:435–446.
MITCHELL, S. (2003). Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance over Time. New
York: Norton.
OLIVER, K. (2001). Witnessing: Beyond Recognition. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
——— (2004). The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social
Theory of Oppression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
REED, G.S. (2006). The reader’s lack: Commentary on Wilson. Journal of the
American Psychoanalytic Association 54:447–456.
RUTI, M. (2006). Reinventing the Soul: Posthumanist Theory and Psychic
Life. New York: Other Press.
SANTNER, E.L. (2001). On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections
on Freud and Rosenzweig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——— (2005). Miracles happen: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Freud, and the
matter of the neighbor. In The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political
Theology, by S. Žižek, E. Santner, & K. Reinhard. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, pp. 76–133.
SILVERMAN, K. (2000). World Spectators. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
WILSON, M. (2006). “Nothing could be further from the truth”: The role of
lack in the analytic process. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association 54:397–422.
Žižek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
——— (1992). Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out.
New York: Routledge.
Department of English
University of Toronto
170 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5R 2M8
CANADA
E-mail: mari.ruti@utoronto.ca

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Mari Ruti 56/2

THE FALL OF FANTASIES:

The purpose of this article is to explain to a non-Lacanian audience the

I t is well known that Jacques Lacan incurred the wrath of generations

Assistant Professor of Critical Theory, English Department, University of Toronto.

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means by lack. Rather than addressing lack as a consequence of specific

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And he believes that it is only on the ruins of the ego’s fantasmatic

One of Lacan’s greatest innovations was to connect the subject’s con-

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cultural systems of meaning—what Lacan calls the symbolic order (or

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makes his theory disagreeable to some—is that he believes the child’s

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foundation of her creative potentialities.9 Lacan in fact insists that though

It is therefore only insofar as the subject is asked time and again to

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Lacan hypothesizes that the origin of such narcissistic fantasies of

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he is more coherent or powerful than he actually is, his theory is less

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When it comes to fantasy formations, it is therefore essential to dis-

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We may now be in a better position to understand (even if we do not fully

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sense of their patients’ dilemmas by providing accurate, meaningful, and

the preconditions of the kind of analytic (interpretive) space that is con-

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THE SINGULARITY OF BEING

At bottom, what is at stake here is the patient’s capacity to assert what is

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from ideals and configurations of thought that have been inculcated

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pulse of desire becomes more audible, more determinedly solicitous of

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discourse we are asked to inhabit.18 This is one way to comprehend what

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emphasizes—it is so important for the analyst to forge an interpretive

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CHENG, A.A. (2001). The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation,

Downloaded from http://apa.sagepub.com by William Stranger on April 1, 2009

LITOWITZ, B.E. (2006). Where does nothing come from? Commentary on

508 Downloaded from http://apa.sagepub.com by William Stranger on April 1, 2009

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