at their destination” independently of whether the addressee receives them (and
opens them). At this stage, for Lacan, “the unconscious... this symbolic construc-
tion, covers all human lived experience like a web... it’s always there, more or less
latent”:^26 despite his limited vital resources, a subject who has successfully resolved
the Oedipus complex is able potentially to proceed to an all-encompassing process
of symbolization.
Two further topographical issues stand out from graphs 4. 3 and 4. 4 : ( 1 ) The
Real-of-language that invades the psychotic and the universal Symbolic as that in
which the nonpsychotic successfully introduces himself are simply two sides of the
same coin.^27 Furthermore, as we saw in Chapter 2 , the Real-of-language as letter
remains the fundamental agency of the (nonpsychotic) subject’s unconscious. ( 2 )
Positing that “there is an Other of the Other” logically entails presupposing the ex-
istence of a pure Real which is simply definable as that which the Symbolic is not.
One should indicate, however, that such a pure Real is what stands outside of the
universalsymbolic Other: despite the fact that psychotics are never in a pure Real,
there is a pure Real which should be located beyond the universal dimension of the
Law/Name-of-the-Father. Lacan talks about this other level of the Name-of-the-
Father on several occasions,^28 most noticeably in Seminar III, where he defines it
as the ultimate “non-deceptive element” and as the “unique principle at the foun-
dation... of the law.”^29 As we have seen, the Name-of-the-Father is, as Other of
the Law, the Other ofthe Other quaOther of the signifiers: when we are confronted
with the “principle of the law,” we are thus dealing directly with the very founda-
tion of the universal Name-of-the-Father.
111
Graph 4.4
SSymbolic as language
(universal Symbolic)
N.O.F.
pure RealSymbolic as “ basic Law”
speech