The Fall of Fantasies- A Lacanian Reading of Lack

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DOI: 10.1177/0003065108319687 2008; 56; 483 J Am Psychoanal Assoc

Mari Ruti The Fall of Fantasies: A Lacanian Reading of Lack

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DOI: 10.1177/0003065108319687

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 thebroad philosophical foundations of Lacanian theory, particularly the rela-tionship that Lacan draws between the human subject’s ontological lackand his or her creative capacities. In an effort to explain Lacan’s distastefor psychoanalytic approaches aimed at strengthening the ego, the arti-cle outlines the manner in which Lacan connects ego-driven fantasies tothe constriction of the subject’s psychic world. Lacan suggests that nar-cissistic fantasies are misleadingly seductive because they—in occludingthe internal rifts and antagonisms of the subject’s being—alleviate his orher 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 herdesire, thereby holding him or her captive in socially conventional psy-chic paradigms. In consequence, it is only the fall of the subject’s mostcherished fantasies that empowers him or her to pursue a degree of sub-jective singularity. The article also considers the clinical implications ofLacan’s theory of lack, including the ways in which the analyst’s lackenhances the patient’s capacity to claim an increasingly autonomous andmultidimensional mode of encountering the world.

The question of the sovereign good is one that man has asked himself since timeimmemorial, but the analyst knows that it is a question that is closed. Not onlydoesn’t he have that sovereign good that is asked of him, but he also knows thatthere isn’t any.

—JACQUES LACAN

It is well known that Jacques Lacan incurred the wrath of generationsof ego psychologists when he asserted that they were hopelessly mis-

guided in their efforts to enhance their patients’ well-being by healing theirsentiments 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.

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483 by William Stranger on April 1, 2009 http://apa.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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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 overthe subject’s lack distances the subject further from the possibility ofaccurately reading his desire.1 Because Lacan understood the ego to be adefensive 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 foundationof identity—he believed that any concession to the ego’s logic wouldmerely make the subject suffer more in the long run. Yielding to thedemands of the ego, in other words, would only perpetuate the deep-seated fantasies that make it difficult for the subject to come to terms withthe uncanny idea that unfulfilled desire, and the resulting agitation, areimmanent to human existence. The objective of psychoanalysis, forLacan, was therefore not to overcome lack by strengthening the ego, butrather to work through, and gradually break down, the elaborate fantasiesthat keep the subject from effectively facing the challenges of his exis-tential situation.2

The annoyance of Lacan’s adversaries was understandable. Not onlydid Lacan seem to attack the (intuitively quite reasonable) coviction thatpsychoanalysis is designed to make individuals feel better about theirlives, but his basic message—the idea that ultimately there is no cure forthe subject’s lack—sounded unnecessarily callous, particularly to ana-lysts who had been trained to mend injured egos and to prop up thesubject’s narcissistic sense of himself as a lovable entity. However, it isimportant to note that much of the tension between Lacan and his detrac-tors stems from a fundamental misunderstanding regarding what he

1To avoid the cumbersome repetition of “he or she,” I have chosen to alternatethese pronouns by section, so that the first section of this essay uses “he,” the second“she,” the third “he,” etc.

2I 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 decidedlynon-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 certainlyinterested in the concepts we usually associate with them. The specificity of Lacanianvocabulary should not obscure the fact that Lacan is frequently concerned with centralquestions about human existence that have preoccupied philosophers from the beginningof Western thought. At the same time, the “humanistic” tone of my paper should not beinterpreted to represent an attempt to deny the generally antihumanist thrust of Lacaniantheory.



means by lack. Rather than addressing lack as a consequence of specificchildhood traumas, abusive personal histories, or unfair and oppressivesocial conditions—as many psychoanalytic schools do—Lacan is con-cerned with lack as the ontological underpinning of human existence. Likemany phenomenological philosophers, Lacan is interested in what it meansfor human beings to face their radical negativity or nothingness, and towrestle 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 abstractideality of Being, with the aspiration to attain absolute existential fullness.

It is precisely because Lacan is more interested in the psychic effectsof ontological lack than he is in the tragic consequences of traumatic lifehistories that the suggestions that he offers to the subject’s predicamenttend to be incomprehensible—and may at times even seem irresponsi-ble—to those who consider it the goal of psychoanalysis to work throughforms 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 aprofoundly philosophical undertaking that has the potential to revise thesubject’s perception of the basic orientation of his existence.

By this I do not wish to suggest that Lacanian theory offers us adviceon how to live our lives. Indeed, if anything, Lacan argues that there is noparticular philosophy of existence that is capable of providing us theanswers we are looking for. He also allows for the possibility that we mayopt for injudicious or injurious life choices even after we have been“properly” analyzed. However, I think that Lacan would not necessarilydisagree with the idea that psychoanalysis opens a space for the kind ofself-reflexivity that enables us to begin to ask the right kinds of questionsabout what we deem important in the world, what kinds of persons wewish to become, and what the best way of going about our lives might be.For Lacan, such questions are often directed at unveiling the alwayspeculiar workings of our desire. As I will illustrate below, the purpose ofobliterating the subject’s illusory convictions about his ontological secu-rity is to create an opening for the “truth” of his desire—for unconsciouscommunications that break through the deceptive edifices of the ego.That is, if Lacan is so intent on tearing down the ego, it is because hebelieves that only by so doing is it possible to release desire from thetightly woven nexus of fantasy that depletes the subject’s psychic life.

A LACANIAN READING OF LACK



And he believes that it is only on the ruins of the ego’s fantasmaticdefenses that the subject can begin to rebuild his existence along linesthat capture the momentum of his desire.

Within this general framework, the purpose of my essay is to examinethe relationship that Lacan establishes between the subject’s inner lack andthe creative potentialities of the psyche. More specifically, I would like toexplain why Lacan regards fantasy formations as an impediment to thesubject’s ability to live to the fullest of his potential. In an attempt to stayaccessible—and to honor the broadly philosophical ethos of this article—Iwill for the most part limit my comments to Lacan’s early work, and moreparticularly to a single aspect of his writings—namely, his contention thatnarcissistic fantasies structure our sense of “reality” in limiting and life-draining ways.3 On the one hand, such fantasies appease our anxiety aboutthe contingent foundations of existence. On the other—and precisely to theextent that they replace the anxiety of uncertainty by a misleading sense ofcertainty—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 iscapable of shielding us from the terror of living—that allows us to transi-tion to a more imaginative and creatively engaged psychic economy. Morespecifically, the disbanding of fantasies enables us to better listen to theidiosyncratic particularity of our desire, and in so doing to begin to forge asingular identity apart from the social conventions that seek to determinethe parameters of our being. In this way, it empowers us to renegotiate howwe relate to the world and, therefore, indirectly, how the world responds tous; it allows us to rewrite our psychic destiny.

THE GIFT OF CREATIV ITY

One of Lacan’s greatest innovations was to connect the subject’s con-stitutive negativity to language—to collective structures of significationand meaning production—in ways that provide a pioneering hypothesisof why and how lack comes to motivate the subject’s behavior in theworld. Lacan explains that the subject’s sense of lack results from theprocesses of language acquisition that socialize the human infant into

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3I am currently writing a book, tentatively titled The Singularity of Being: Lacan’sLegacies, 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 presentpaper 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 childis not yet fully capable of differentiating between herself and the peopleand objects that surround her. She consequently possesses neither aninner life nor a social awareness. For these to emerge—for the child toenter a fully human existence—she needs to undergo a course of separa-tion that teaches her to recognize herself as distinct from the world. Freudtheorized this course of separation in terms of the oedipus complex as amechanism that severs the child’s dependence on her surroundings byforcing her to confront the painful fact that certain objects—most notablythe mother or the father—remain erotically forbidden. Lacan in turnemphasizes that it is by internalizing the significatory codes of thesociosymbolic 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 languagebrings the child’s psychic life into being, making her capable of produc-ing meaning. The same way as the oedipus complex transforms the childfrom a creature ruled by primordial drives to one who enacts desire inculturally intelligible ways, language acquisition inserts the child into theworld of collective rules and regulations (the world of the symbolicOther). This process is necessary not only because it teaches the child toconduct herself as a social and intersubjective entity, but also because itgives 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 orderdeems 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. Asa consequence, it generates lack—the relentless sense of incompletenessthat characterizes human existence—as the melancholy underside ofsocial subjectivity.

Although most psychoanalytic approaches recognize the child’s sep-aration from her caretakers and the surrounding world as a pivotalmoment of subject formation, they do not necessarily see lack as aninevitable corollary of this moment. For many of them, the child emergesfrom the process of individuation feeling wounded or insecure only ifsomething about this process goes awry—as, for instance, when theparents for one reason or another fail to fully facilitate the child’s transi-tion to social subjectivity. What makes Lacan distinctive—and what




makes his theory disagreeable to some—is that he believes the child’sawareness of lack and longing to be inescapable; it is, in a sense, the pricethe child pays for being able to enter the social realm of meanings andvalues. The signifier, insofar as it carries cultural prohibition, forces thechild to realize that she is not invincible, that she operates within a socialworld that is much more powerful than she could ever be, and that thereare 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 withthe world, causing an irreparable inner rift or division; the very develop-mental course that empowers the child to materialize as a psychicallyautonomous entity is also what makes her feel lacking and self-alienated.That is, while language initiates an indispensable process of characterformation, it also causes a kind of symbolic castration. What is lost in thisprocess—what drains into the void of being—is the subject’s fantasy ofself-sufficiency. This unfortunate event, Lacan suggests, is what thesubject spends the rest of her life working through.4

Language generates lack. Lack in turn generates desire. While it iscommon 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 cutinto the child’s biological constitution. Indeed, a great deal has been madeof the fact that, in Lacanian terms, desire emerges through the mortificationand 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 beingbeyond the symbolic system into which it is inserted. As Slavoj Zizek(1992) explains: “Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementarysense of implying its absence—by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, asdead, although it is still present—but above all in the sense of its radicaldissection: the word ‘quarters’ the thing . . .” (p. 51).5 The signifier thuscarves out the body in specific ways in order to give rise to a particular

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4Here 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 andpurely fantasmatic construct that is designed to conceal the fact that no such primor-dial condition of wholeness and unmitigated enjoyment ever existed.

5Zizek (1992) here paraphrases Lacan (1966a), who states: “Thus the symbolmanifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing, and this death constitutes in thesubject the eternalization of his desire” (p. 104). I am in this instance using Sheridan’stranslation 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 Zizek.



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 abilityto 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 immediateenjoyment is sacrificed to the signifier that subjectivity as a site of socialenergy and desire comes into being. This privileging of the “passion of thesignifier” (Lacan 1966b, p. 578) over the passion of the body is undoubtedlyproblematic 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 alsopresents a poignant insight into the nature of subjectivity when he suggeststhat 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 andunfolding of the surrounding world.7 After all, without desire, the subjectwould have little curiosity regarding the things, objects, and beings thatinhabit 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 approachthe world as a space of possibility. That is, it is only insofar as the subjectexperiences 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 andthat might accordingly have something valuable to offer. In this manner, lackgives rise to a self that is open to—and ravenous for—the world.

Because the world is filled with marvelous objects that entice thesubject’s desire—because the world, though certainly full of limitationsand deprivations, is also brimming with possibilities—the subject is


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6It 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 laterseminars—beginning with Seminar VII (1959–1960)—display an increasing focus onthe real. As Lacan (1975–1976) announces in his seminar on the sinthome, “What isimportant 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, seeFink (1997, pp. 207–217), as well as Zizek (1989, p. 133).

7By this I do not mean that the psyche has no relationship to the outside worldprior to the inception of signification, but merely that the signifier transforms thisrelationship into one of desire.



compelled to reach beyond her solipsistic universe; she is given the giftof attentiveness. This turning outward is, moreover, not limited to anencounter with already existing objects, but entails the strong aspiration tobring new objects into being. Precisely because the subject can never attain astate 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 ofmeaning that can, momentarily at least, ease and contain the discomfort ofalienation. In this paradoxical sense, rather than robbing the subject of innerrichness and vitality, lack is the underpinning of everything that is potentiallyinnovative about human life. Indeed, it is possible to envision the intricateproductions and fabrications of the human psyche as vehicles through whichthe foundational lack of existence assumes a positive and tangible form. Thisin 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 inZizekian/Hegelian terms—is indispensable for her psychic aliveness. As amatter 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 thespirit into symbolic formations, imaginative undertakings, and sites of deli-cate beauty that make the world the absorbing and spellbinding place thatit—in its most auspicious moments, at least—can be.

The subject’s repeated attempts to fill the void within her being thusgive rise to a whole host of creative endeavors. Or in more Lacanianterms, because the subject can never repossess the blissful state of pleni-tude that she imagines having lost, because the subject cannot attain whatLacan calls the Thing—the primordial object that promises unmediatedenjoyment—she is driven to look for surrogates that might compensatefor 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 Thingwere not fundamentally veiled,” Lacan explains, “we wouldn’t be in thekind of relationship to it that obliges us, as the whole of psychic life isobliged, 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 aroundemptiness, “creates it, just like the mythical creator, ex nihilo, startingwith a hole” (p. 121), the subject fashions a signifier, or an elaboratestring or sequence of signifiers, from the void of her being.8

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8Silverman (2000) analyzes this statement in World Spectators (pp. 45–49).



Lacan emphasizes that emptiness and fullness—the void of the vase andthe 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 thesubject to move to an existential space beyond mortification by grantingher the gift of creativity.

In this context, it is important to specify that the translation of lackinto 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, givingher access to no permanent meaning, no solid identity, no unitary narra-tive of self-actualization. Any fleeting state of fullness or positivity thatthe subject may be able to attain must always in the end dissolve back intonegativity; any endeavor to erase lack only gives rise to new instances oflack. 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 thatthe subject can never forge an object or a representation that would onceand for all seal this lack. However, far from being a hindrance to existen-tial vitality, this intrinsic impossibility—the fact that every attempt toredeem lack unavoidably falls short of its mark—is what allows us, overand again, to take up the endless process of signifying beauty. As KajaSilverman (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 ceaselesssignification. It is finally this never-ending symbolization that the worldwants 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 thesubject’s relative helplessness vis-à-vis the larger systems of significationthat envelop her, he at the same time suggests that it is only by virtue ofher membership in the symbolic order that the subject possesses thecapacity to make meaning in the first place. The symbolic, in other words,is not merely (or even primarily) a hegemonic structure that coerces thesubject into its law, but also—as I have endeavored to illustrate—the




foundation of her creative potentialities.9 Lacan in fact insists that thoughthe subject can never master the signifier—let alone the signified—sheenjoys a certain degree of imaginative leeway with respect to it. Hedescribes this imaginative leeway as the subject’s capacity to make use ofthe “poetic function” of language (1966b, p. 264)—the fact that languageby 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 thanmerely instrumental ways, Lacan envisions creativity in terms of thesubject’s capacity to take a poetic approach to the world—an approachthat is content to play with meaning without attempting to arrest it inunequivocal or transparent definitions.

THE APPEAL OF FANTASIES

It is therefore only insofar as the subject is asked time and again toreincarnate the lost Thing that he attains creative agency. However, it isvery difficult for the subject to conceive of his predicament in theseterms. The realization that the self is not synonymous with the world, butrather a frail and faltering creature that needs to continuously negotiatehis position in the world, introduces an apprehensive state of want andrestlessness. Lacan explains that because lack is devastating to admit to—because the subject tends to experience it as an aching wound rather thanas a humanizing principle that gives him access to creativity—he is pre-disposed to seek solace in fantasy formations that allow him to mask andignore the reality of this lack. Such fantasies alleviate anxiety and fendoff the threat of fragmentation because they enable the subject to considerhimself as more unified and complete than he actually is; by concealingthe traumatic split or tear within the subject’s being, such fantasies lendan always illusory form of consistency and meaning to his existence.

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9In Reinventing the Soul (Ruti 2006), I argue against the temptation to equate theLacanian symbolic with what Foucault means by hegemonic power. Although thesymbolic can be (and often is) harnessed for regulatory ends, it is not synonymouswith disciplinary power. By this I of course do not wish to discount that fact that thereare specific signifiers—signifiers that carry the unequal effects of power—that woundparticular subjects, that cut up subjects in devastating ways. What is important, in thiscontext, is to ask who in our culture tends to be denigrated by signifiers and who hasaccess to their creative potential.



Lacan hypothesizes that the origin of such narcissistic fantasies ofplenitude 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; unableto 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 versionof the ancient myth of Narcissus, who, upon catching his reflection in apool of water, becomes so hopelessly enamored of his own loveliness thathe is incapable of tearing himself away from his image. In the myth, thefact that Narcissus confuses the image in the pool with himself leads to hisdemise. Likewise, Lacan implies that the love that the adult subject feelsfor his romanticized image—an image that serves as a tantalizing token ofthe wholeness that the subject so ardently covets—signifies a certain kindof 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 purelynegative phenomenon. From time to time, we all need mirrors—momentswhen others complete, recognize, or witness us in idealizing, indulgent,and loving ways. This is the case particularly for those who have beennarcissistically wounded. As Lewis Kirshner (2004) observes, for indi-viduals whose early lives were characterized by deficiencies of basic careand recognition, and who in consequence find it arduous to sustain aviable subject position, compassionate mirroring may be essential forundoing a skewed perception of worthlessness. In such instances, mirror-ing is a benign form of empathy that responds to the subject’s legitimatedemand for recognition and narcissistic repair.10 One might in fact arguethat in cases that involve the forceful robbing of the subject’s sense ofself-esteem, it may be necessary to reconstitute the ego before embarkingupon a critique of its ontological status. That is, Lacan’s adamant resis-tance to the narcissistic tendencies of the ego may make it difficult toappreciate situations where the ego has been so profoundly injured byabusive or oppressive interpersonal relationships that its capacity for nar-cissistic fantasies has been destroyed. Although Lacan is correct in beingsuspicious of the ego’s capacity to deceive the subject into thinking that


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10For excellent discussions of narcissistic injury, see Lynne Layton (1999) andKelly Oliver (2001, 2004).



he is more coherent or powerful than he actually is, his theory is lessimmediately useful when it comes to cases where the subject is led tobelieve in his own absolute insignificance. This explains why Lacaniantheory is not always particularly relevant when it comes to understandingand treating the aftereffects of traumatic life histories.11

Perhaps even more fundamentally, it is possible to argue that there isno “reality” that is not always already a form of fantasy: that fantasy is allwe have. In other words, the very distinction between “reality” and “fan-tasy” is in many ways an artificial one, reminiscent of an Enlightenmentworldview—one that believed in the power of the rational mind to tell factfrom fiction—that has been seriously undermined in recent decades bypostmodern theorizing. That is, the belief that we could ever relate to theworld objectively, as it “really is,” has itself been discredited as a fantasythat occludes the recognition that the ways we perceive and interpret theworld 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 attemptsto represent reality invariably shape the form of this reality. By this I do notmean to say that there exists no reality independent of human representa-tions, but merely that we do not possess any immediate or unmediatedaccess to that reality; since we understand the world around us onlythrough the conceptual frameworks, labels, and systems of thought that we

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11I think it important to acknowledge that Lacanian theory is not always immedi-ately applicable to instances of psychic abjection that are circumstantial rather thanontological. The notion of learning to live with one’s lack or insecurity takes on awholly different valence when that lack or insecurity emerges from past abuse, inter-subjective victimization, or social oppression. Indeed, recognizing the differencebetween ontological and circumstantial forms of lack is valuable because it helpsclarify the distinction between deconstructive forms of psychoanalysis—such asLacanian 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 oftenfocus on lack as an ontological state. This means that while restorative approachestend to rely on processes of self-narrativization that empower the subject to resistbeing “named” by wounding external forces, and that allow him over time to rewritehis traumatic past along more affirmative lines, deconstructive approaches aspire totake 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 narrativesto facilitate a constructive reclaiming of the subject’s history, deconstructive theoriestend 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 withthat of Derrida, but merely that I think that Lacan’s approach to narrativization isdeconstructive in the broad sense of the term.)



impose on this world, there is no way to know what this world might belike outside of our endeavors to comprehend it.

The fact that our understanding of the world—not to mention oursense of ourselves—can be posited to be a fantasmatic construct does notmean that we do not experience it as real. In other words, the idea thatsomething is constructed should not be confused with the idea that it pos-sesses no power over us or that it somehow lacks psychic resonance, forto the degree that fantasmatic constructs over time come to take on theforce of reality for us, they function as a means of world-constitution that“actualize” the world for us. Talking about the molding of subjectivity inparticular, Anne Anlin Cheng (2001) observes that fantasy is not an activ-ity undertaken by an already fully formed subject, but rather (in part atleast) what allows the subject to engage in the process of fashioning hisidentity in the first place. This is to say that fantasy can be an essentialvehicle 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 foragency.” Fantasy, in this sense, is not the opposite of reality, but ratherwhat brings reality into being; it is “what authenticates realness, whatmakes reality real” (p. 120).

If fantasies are how we constitute not only the world, but also our ownsense 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 intoquestion 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 kindof search for secure epistemological foundations that Lacan activelyshuns. 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, itcould be argued to be a mystification that keeps us from appreciating thevarious ways in which fantasies can enhance our existence by injectingsplashes of passion or enchantment into our otherwise humdrum lives; itprevents us from discerning that fantasies are not only delusions that derailus from the concrete realities of our lives, but also, potentially at least, ameans of disclosing previously unknown realms of meaning.

An imaginative approach to the world—one that actively engages thefantasmatic 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




the world into focus for us. As a matter of fact, insofar as fantasies arealways linked to our (conscious or unconscious) wishes and longings,they render the world more desirable to us, with the consequence that wescrutinize it more carefully, with a heightened degree of attentiveness todetails and attributes that we might otherwise overlook. As StephenMitchell (2003) explains, taking fantasy seriously engenders “a morecomplex understanding of things, others, and ourselves, as offering manyfacets and considerable ambiguity, coming alive always, necessarily, par-tially through acts of imagination” (p. 107). That is, when ordinary realityis perceived as a construction rather than as an objective fact, fantasy canno longer be thought of as what contaminates reality, but should insteadbe regarded as a process of bringing the world alive for us in a particularlyvibrant fashion. According to this vision, “reality” is a fantasy that weelaborate on an increasingly intricate level during our entire lifetime.

THROUGH THE LOOKING - GLASS

When it comes to fantasy formations, it is therefore essential to dis-tinguish between (1) unconscious fantasies that curb our existentialoptions and (2) imaginative and creative fantasies that allow us to observethe world from novel angles. Lacan’s assault on narcissistic fantasies isdirected 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 thepoetic aspects of language at the end of this essay. For now, it is worthrepeating that the main reason Lacan resists narcissistic fantasies is thatthey tend to organize our psychic “reality” in ways that disguise all clefts,ruptures, and antagonisms within that reality. They make our identitiesappear both reliable and immediately readable to us. As a result, they alltoo easily lead us to believe that we can come to know ourselves in adefinitive 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 confusionabout the nature of our existence by imposing a false coherence where weshould discern a complex and ever evolving pattern of open-ended possi-bility. As Eric Santner (2001) explains, they deform our lives by freezingour being “into a schema, a distinctive ‘torsion’ or spin that colors/distortsthe 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

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and our place in it” (pp. 39–40). Fantasies, in other words, restrict ourmovement 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 theprocess 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 thesubject from riding the signifier in agile and innovative ways, for it limitsmeaning production to those forms that accord with the worldview pro-moted by the subject’s foundational fantasies. In this fashion, fantasiesprevent the subject from recognizing that it is only when she comes toaccept the absolute alterity—the radical and at times terrifying alienness—of her being that she is able to truly participate in the unpredictablerhythm of the world (that she is able to begin to weave the threads of herlife into a psychically supple tapestry). That is, the subject who affirmslack understands—in however inchoate a manner—that lack is not merelya daunting or sterile void, but the precondition of her capacity for imagi-native living, including her ability to ask constructive questions about herlife. Such questions do not give the subject access to the ultimate meaningof her existence, yet it may well be the simple act of asking them—whatJonathan 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 fixedor definitive answers to such questions—that the subject is invited to enterinto a continuous and ever renewed process of grappling with them—thatmost intensely shapes her as an individual.

One could even say that the act of passing through the looking-glassof 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 inobstinately repetitive ways are so damaging in part because they presenta 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 theworld as the only conceivable world in the sense that she cannot evenbegin to imagine how she could ever change things for the better(pp. 48–49). She is in fact more than a little intimidated by alternativepossibilities. According to this account, “any purported field of possibili-ties is always a somewhat restricting fantasy of what is possible in human




life” (Lear 2000, p. 161). It is as if our psychic lives were the sum totalof our bad habits in the sense that what we unconsciously assume to bethe boundaries of our lives ends up curtailing the range of our existentialoptions for the simple reason that it consistently directs us to certain sit-uations, behaviors, and interpersonal relations while steering us awayfrom others. Or, to express the matter in more Lacanian terms, it dictateshow we seek and obtain pleasure in the world, thereby determining thevery shape of our enjoyment. This is a perfect manifestation of whatRoberto 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 createspace for alternative life plots and directions, and in so doing to expandthe subject’s repertoire of existential options. Analysis deliberately cre-ates fissures in the individual’s dearest and most trenchantly reenactedfantasies so as to provide an opening for a more imaginatively lithe senseof life’s potentialities. The subject who is used to operating in the worldaccording to a predetermined set of possibilities—whose relationship tothe world consistently displays patterns of being punished, suffocated,persecuted, or disenchanted, for instance—is gradually persuaded torevise the parameters of what she finds conceivable so that fresh kinds ofthoughts, actions, and modes of relating become plausible. Lear (2004)describes this process of existential expansion as one of opening up “thepossibility for new possibilities” (p. 112). Santner (2005) in turn positsthat breaking the spell of fantasies—intervening in the “hypnotic com-mandments” that generate eccentric yet strangely binding libidinalimpasses—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, theprocess of releasing psychic energies that are bound up in the unyieldingencasing of fantasies converts these energies into “more life,” therebymaking them available to more elastic psychic enactments (p. 40).

From a specifically Lacanian perspective, learning to live without thekinds of fantasies that protect us from our lack entails an epistemologicalleap to a vastly different existential attitude. In particular, Lacan invitesus to acknowledge that regardless of all the busy and clamorous activitythat we habitually undertake in order to suppress or ignore our lack, deepdown we know that there will always be moments when it breaks out intothe open with the piercing clarity and sadness of a foghorn. No matter

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how many layers of fantasy we wrap around this hollow in our hearts, itreverberates through us like a muted but persistent echo that carries theuncanny messages of what most terrifies us about ourselves. For Lacan, ourexistential assignment is to heed that echo, to withstand moments whennothing fills the void, and to work through the realization that neither wenor the world—nor any of the objects of this world—can ever live up to theperfection of our fantasies. Our task, in other words, is to learn to endurethe sharp points of existence without being irrevocably devastated.

LACK IN THE ANALYTIC SPACE

We may now be in a better position to understand (even if we do not fullyendorse) Lacan’s critique of ego psychology. If Lacan scorns the attemptsof ego psychologists to shore up the subject’s ego, it is because hebelieves that they have gotten things entirely backward: instead of help-ing the subject accept lack as constitutive of subjectivity, they intensifyhis existential confusion—not to mention desperation—by playing intoand reinforcing his narcissistic fantasies. Lacan deems this approach tobe deeply flawed in that it hastens to prematurely close the void withinthe subject’s being instead of fostering the imaginative possibilities thatarise from this void; it promises the end of alienation, rather than teach-ing the subject to resourcefully live with this alienation; and it dilutes thesubject’s power to mobilize the signifier in ways that would add creativevitality to his existence. Such a tactic, Lacan suggests, is always to someextent 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 lackis, 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 largelyidiosyncratic reasons—such as his vehement dislike of what he saw as aspecifically American tendency to turn psychoanalysis into a tool of socialconformity—but his commentary on the dangers of ignoring lack remainshighly relevant to contemporary debates about the purpose of clinicalpractice. Mitchell Wilson (2006) has recently noted that Anglo-Americanclinicians are not, generally speaking, used to thinking about lack in theLacanian sense, with the result that they are likely to overlook its genera-tive potential. More specifically, Anglo-American clinical practice tendsto be biased toward presence and plenitude (the filling of lack) in the sensethat analysts are tempted—and sometimes even feel compelled—to make




sense of their patients’ dilemmas by providing accurate, meaningful, andseamless interpretations. Wilson points out that it is not at all clear thatsuch affirmative giving of meaning to the patient always serves a curativefunction, 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 ofexistential uncertainty and incompleteness. Or—to frame that matter interms that resonate with my discussion of fantasy—it holds the patientcaptive 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’slack with a reassuring display of presence and plenitude obscures the waysin which the process of analysis is often moved forward by the analyst’slack—by his various mistakes, misrecognitions, and misinterpretations. Itoccludes the fact that “missing the patient” (p. 401)—getting the patientwrong—is not only an unavoidable dimension of analysis, but is essential toits 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 anddeprivation—that he is interested in the positive and facilitative effects oflack (p. 412). As I have said, confusing the Lacanian notion of lack withchildhood trauma is what makes it so difficult for many non-Lacanians toenvision lack as anything but a deficit or a form of dispossession. Andindeed, some of the commentators on Wilson’s article read his privilegingof lack over presence and plenitude as an indication that he regards analyticinterpretation as “necessarily unfulfilling” (Goldberg 2006, p. 431), advo-cates the “futility of interpretation” (Litowitz 2006, p. 444), and “makes apathology 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 toassume that an emphasis on lack leads automatically to an impoverishmentof the analytic space (so that there is no more interpretation, no insight, andno support, but merely the callousness of an analyst who no longer cares).Yet, from a Lacanian perspective—the perspective I have endeavored toelucidate—it is immediately obvious that Wilson’s point is exactly theopposite, 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 advocatingthe analyst’s interpretive indifference or complacency, he is interested in

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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. Inother words, Wilson is not arguing against the value of interpretation, butmerely calling our attention to the kind of interpretations that are so quickto provide meaning that they foreclose the patient’s capacity to fully enterinto an open-ended process of meaning production; such interpretationsrun the risk of stifling or suffocating the patient by making it impossiblefor him to actively engage the creative potentialities of the signifier. Incontrast, the analyst who foregrounds his own lack—who allows this lackto become visible and accessible through the mistakes that he makes—exhibits an attitude of deep generosity in the sense that he invites thepatient to become a co-creator (an equal collaborator in the production)of meaning. Paradoxically enough, the analyst’s mistakes, by revealingthat his interpretations are not the only possible ones, serve as the foun-dation of a certain kind of interpretive plenitude by providing an openingfor the patient’s attempts to name his own world.12

Wilson’s commentators are correct in positing that his notion of lackis too diffuse in that it includes everything from the subject’s ontologicallack—lack in the Lacanian sense that I have outlined—to the analyst’smistakes in missing the patient. Yet Wilson’s intuition about the connec-tion between ontological lack and missing the patient is quite subtle, forhe implies that insofar as missing the patient showcases the analyst as afallible and less-than-perfect (i.e., lacking) subject, it familiarizes thepatient with the idea that lack is a universal condition of human existencethat can be tolerated and worked with (rather than a shameful personalfailing that must be fantasmatically occluded).13 After all, if the analyst—who, as Lacan speculated, functions for the patient as the subject who is


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12Kirshner (2006) expresses this quite eloquently: “Once we accept this state ofaffairs, the nature of analytic work changes in major ways. No longer are we presentto interpret the historical or psychic truth of the patient’s suffering, and no longer arewe authorized to act as observers of psychic processes that will eventually reveal theirsecrets to us. Instead we are peculiar participants and guardians of a space in which areconfiguration or a new set of articulations of self with Other can take shape” (p. 427).

13Here it is relevant to recall Lacan’s insistence (1966b) that there is no Other of theOther—no final arbitrator of the Other’s discourse (p. 688). By this statement, Lacanwishes to emphasize that the Other is haunted by lack and inconsistency as much as thesubject is—that the Other’s reliability is ultimately as illusory as the subject’s own. Thatis, in the same way that there is a lack in the subject that keeps him from being identicalwith himself, there is a lack in the Other that prevents it from ever becoming a closedtotality that could convincingly legitimate the ideology that it espouses. Insofar asLacanian analysis places the analyst in the position of the Other, Lacan’s statements aboutthe lack in the Other are directly relevant to Wilson’s argument about the analyst’s lack.



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 invinciblesubjectivity.14 This suggests that insofar as the analyst is able to revealhimself as fallible without at the same time losing his ability to be a com-petent analyst, the patient gradually internalizes one of the most valuablelessons of Lacanian analysis, namely, that lack does not necessarilyundermine one’s claim on subjectivity and aliveness; the analyst’s capac-ity to de-idealize himself, as it were, gives the patient the “permission” toembrace the notion that leading a reasonable life does not presupposeseamless psychic integration. This is an important step in facilitating thepatient’s ability to puncture the narcissistic fantasies that are designed toshield him from his lack.

To press the matter a step further, one could argue that to the extentthat the analyst is able to gracefully handle moments when he misses thepatient—to the extent that he manages to weave his mistakes into theevolving texture of the analytic fabric—he gestures to the patient thatmaking a mistake is a potentially valuable opening to fresh insights andpossibilities. By using his mistakes to access new, perhaps previouslyoverlooked, 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 thanan 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 thisreason that, to borrow from Wilson, the analyst’s “acting interpretively”(p. 399) is ultimately far more important than the content—the accuracyor inaccuracy—of his interpretations.

THE S INGULARITY OF BE ING

At bottom, what is at stake here is the patient’s capacity to assert what issingular about her being. Fink (1997) has underscored that one of theaspirations of Lacanian analysis is to facilitate the subject’s departure

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14In this context, it is worth emphasizing that Lacan is adamant that it is not theanalyst’s job to provide answers to the patient’s existential questions or to pretend tohave such answers. Insofar as the analyst plays the part of the big Other, the point ofanalysis is, precisely, to dispel the patient’s fantasy that the Other “knows.”



from ideals and configurations of thought that have been inculcatedwithin her psyche by the various authority figures that surround her frombirth; 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 canbecome an active co-creator of meaning—enhances the patient’s ability toassume responsibility for her own beliefs, passions, and unique perspec-tive.15 As Wilson accentuates, the analyst’s missing the patient “allows thepatient to take up his or her own place, to articulate in increasingly clearways a position in his or her own individual voice” (p. 401).

A more explicitly Lacanian way of expressing the matter is to saythat analysis invites the subject to take responsibility for the particularityof 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 desireof the analyst as one powerful incarnation of the Other). Lacan in factsuggests that when the subject is estranged from her desire—when sheallows herself to be overrun by the desire of the Other—her existencefeels empty, apathetic, and devoid of meaning; when in the throes of suchlife-deadening conformity, the subject goes through the motions of life ina 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 frequencyof one’s desire. Such fantasies obscure this frequency to the extent thatthey mask the lack within the subject’s being that gives rise to desire inthe first place. As a result, when these fantasies dissolve, the insistent


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15It could of course be argued that the subject’s beliefs, passions, and perspectiveare never her “own,” but rather are socioculturally determined. Yet I would say thateven 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 suchsystems. One might describe such subjectivity as socially informed (as opposed tosocially complacent).

16Lacan (1966b) characterizes the predicament of such a subject as follows: “Hewill make an effective contribution to the collective undertaking in his daily work andwill be able to occupy his leisure time with all the pleasures of a profuse culturewhich—providing everything from detective novels to historical memoirs and fromeducational 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).



pulse of desire becomes more audible, more determinedly solicitous ofthe subject’s response. This implies that the subject who manages to workthrough her fantasies is, hypothetically at least, better able to distinguishbetween the voice of the Other—whatever masquerades as her desire—and the actuality of that desire. Such a subject is able to enter into theongoing process of fashioning a singular identity in accordance with thecomplexity of her desire.

This is where the notion of poetic language becomes relevant, for, aswe have seen, it is the signifier that carries our desire. Indeed, it is only assubjects of signification that we are capable of desire in the first place. Inthis context, it is important to repeat that even though Lacan regards lan-guage as something that all too easily deprives us of singularity (of thespecificity of our desire) by subjecting us to sociodiscursive hegemonies,he admits that the signifier does not always coincide with the symbolicorder—that the signifier does not invariably speak or support the discourseof 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 oneuses; one has the power to activate the poetic function of language. AsLacan (1975–1976) observes, “This assumes or implies that one choosesto 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 littlenudge, without which language would not be alive” (p. 133; transl. mine).

Lacan therefore concedes that although language functions as animpersonal structure into which we are introduced at birth, we are never-theless capable of giving it a little (poetic) “nudge” that transforms it intosomething uniquely ours—that conveys something about the “truth” ofour 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 creativefreedom. In other words, even though being compelled to participate in acommon 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

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17Here one should recall the distinction that Lacan makes in “The Function andField of Speech” (1966b) between “empty” or “false” speech that fails to carry thesubject’s desire, and “full” or “true” speech that manages to convey the specificity ofthis desire.



discourse we are asked to inhabit.18 This is one way to comprehend whatit might mean to insist on the possibility of agency—on the fact that weare not merely subservient to hegemonic social structures, but can and dohave an impact on these structures; it clarifies why we manage from timeto time to rearticulate and reorganize social reality.

Because the cultural order produces socially intelligible subjects byassimilating them into its disciplinary machinery, there of necessity existsa constant tension between our (largely fantasmatic) conception of our-selves as individuals who possess at least the potential for exceptionalityand our recognition that we are always already dominated by a socialorder that bars us from exceptionality—that in fact sells its own normativedefinition of what it means to be exceptional, thereby eradicating any“genuine” possibility for exceptionality. No wonder, then, that we tend tofind narcissistic fantasies more appealing than the reality principle, forsuch fantasies provide us, precisely, with an inflated sense of our excep-tionality. However, as I have emphasized, the illusion of uniqueness thatsuch fantasies offer is in many ways the very antithesis of creative agency,for it merely reflects what is most stubborn and mechanical about ourunconscious ways of relating to the world. In contrast, the signifier—thealways peculiar ways in which we take up cultural meaning—provides anauthentic opening for the emergence of psychic distinctiveness. On thisview, it is not only how we die—or face the prospect of our mortality, asphenomenologists 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 inmany ways a function of the various creative ways in which we manageto breathe life into the signifier.19 This is precisely why—as Wilson


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18One could say that ordinary language—language that conforms to the hege-monic ideologies and practices of the symbolic Other—tends to distance us from oursingularity 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 andtoward singularity because their very purpose is to challenge—or at the very least tooffer alternatives to—habitual conventions of meaning production. To the degree thatpoetic language aspires to alter our usual perception of how language functions, itautomatically creates an opportunity for new forms of meaning, and consequently,potentially at least, for singular sorts of subjective enactments.

19Zizek and Santner have both linked subjective singularity to those aspects of theself that manage to defy social classification—that do not lend themselves to sym-bolic translation or domestication. Their compelling arguments are unfortunatelybeyond the scope of this paper.



emphasizes—it is so important for the analyst to forge an interpretivespace in which the patient can begin to actively claim the signifier. Thepatient who is able to assert a degree of interpretive authority—who is, asit were, able to hold her own vis-à-vis the analyst as a representative ofthe big Other—over time grows less afraid of the Other’s judgments; shebecomes increasingly capable of independent deliberation and action. Bythis I do not mean to imply that the relationship between analyst andpatient is inherently antagonistic. Rather, I am merely suggesting that ananalysis 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 theinevitable tension between being a generic subject (being subjected to thesymbolic order) and being a singular creature (having a unique identity thatsomehow surpasses the parameters of that order). We are of course alwaysboth at once, but it is only as singular creatures that we feel fully engaged inour lives. What I have tried to demonstrate is that, in Lacanian terms, the morewe 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 betterour 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 patternsto a more active and life-enriching (poetic) connection with the world.

Strangely enough, although the Other does not possess answers toour life-defining questions, the significatory resources that it makes avail-able to us enable us to devise the kinds of answers that we can—alwaystentatively and provisionally—live with. This is precisely why the task ofthe Lacanian analyst is not to offer definitive answers to the patient’squestions, 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

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20Zizek (1992) argues forcefully that the lack to be assumed by the subject is not herown, but rather that of the Other. As he postulates, “one can only wonder at the fact thateven 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 heroicsacrifice: the lack to be assumed by the subject is not its own but that of the Other, whichis something incomparably more unbearable” (p. 58). I would maintain, however, that inthe end these two scenarios amount to the same thing: accepting the fact that the Otheris lacking implies coming to terms with the fact that the Other does not possess theanswers 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 knowingthat even though the question of the “sovereign good” is from the outsetclosed, questions that sustain us as creatures of becoming and psychicpotentiality—questions pertaining to desire, creativity, and the passion ofself-actualization, for example—are ones that can be closed only by ourown (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: Theoryand Technique. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

GOLDBERG, A. (2006). A lament about lack: Commentary on Wilson. Journalof the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:429–433.

HARARI, R. (2002). How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the FinalLacan, transl. L. Thurston. New York: Other Press.

HEIDEGGER, M. (1971). Poetry, Language, Thought, transl. A. Hofstadter. NewYork: Harper & Row.

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Department of EnglishUniversity of Toronto170 St. George StreetToronto, Ontario M5R 2M8CANADAE-mail: [email protected]

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The Fall of Fantasies- A Lacanian Reading of Lack

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