( 1 ) The right-hand side of schema 3. 4 shows that φis nothing but the signified of
the Other as such; in other words, signification(in the big Other) can only be phallic.The
fact that the signifier Desire-of-the-Mother—as the inscrutable m-Other—is sub-
stituted by the signifier Name-of-the-Father allows the child actually to relate to a
signifying Other for the first time: the utter impenetrability of the signifier Desire-
of-the-m-Other prevented it from being experienced as an actual signifier.
( 2 ) Consequently, we can understand why, in the schema of the paternal metaphor
(schema 3. 4 ), the signifying Other corresponds to what Lacan had designated as
“1” in the general schema of the metaphor (schema 3. 3 ). The intervention of the
Name-of-the-Father and the ensuing emergence of phallic signification makes the
Other become One for the child. Lacan’s underestimated false tautology from Sem-
inar V “Un Autre, c’est un Autre,”^168 could adequately be rendered in English as “An
Other is one Other.”
( 3 ) This phallic oneness of the Other is simultaneously constituted as differen-
tial. φis the signified of the Desire-of-the-Mother but, at the same time, the phallus
is also an oppositional imaginary signifier.The fact that the Name-of-the-Father is a
substitute for the impenetrable Desire-of-the-Mother, and institutes the latter as φ,
alsomeans that the desire-of- φis symbolically instituted as a “rebellious lack”^169
which can never fully be satisfied. From this it follows that phallic oneness is per-
fectly compatible with the fact that the phallus is the “signifierof lack,” “the signi-
fier of the impossibility or of the vanity of the demand to be whole.”^170
More generally, one should realize that, in and around Seminar V, Lacan thinks the
phallus as both a signified anda signifier: his most frequently repeated definition of
the phallus is that it is a “privileged signifier.”^171 These apparent contradictions have
misled many a commentator. Even Safouan, in his otherwise impeccable summary
of Seminar V, is not able to reconcile these different definitions: indeed, when he
wrongly concludes that the phallus is a “signifier and not an object or a signified”
he is, from what we have just seen, unknowingly contradicting Lacan in the most
blatant way.^172
How precisely should we understand the phallus as both a signified and a sig-
nifier? The phallus is an imaginary signified (φ) with respect to the Name-of-the-
Father. At the same time and for the same reason, it is a symbolic signifier (Φ) with
respect to the “signified as such.” Signification as such is in fact phallic for Lacan;
the phallus is therefore also defined as “the signifier of the signified in general,”
hence its “privileged” character.^173 In other words, the fact that the phallus partakes
of both the signified and the signifier can rightly be grasped only if one realizes
that, despite being strictly related to each other, the Name-of-the-Father and the
phallus are not the same thing. The former is understood by Lacan in Seminar V as