in Seminar V, and interpreting them in a new manner, one could argue that, after
A is barred, the universal symbolic father—who has by now lost his transcen-
dence—exists onlythrough the particular instantiations of the symbolic Law in the
real father.
In parallel, this amounts to saying that the nondeceptive element that guaran-
tees the symbolic order as such—in a phallic way—eventually relies upon the
successful unfolding of the Oedipus complex of the (majority of the) subject(s),
and that such a success obviates a potentially generalized psychotic condition.
The openness or crack that earlier characterized the “deficit” of psychosis is now
seen as structural: madness is a structural possibility for all beings of language
that can only subsequently be obviated. It is in this shift that the passage from
“there isan Other of the Other” to “there is noOther of the Other” essentially con-
sists. In other words, at this stage, the Name-of-the-Father can suture the sym-
bolic order only as a “cork” (bouchon):^54 such a cork fills in the gap of a real hole
which, as we shall see later in more detail, somehow remains present in spite of
being corked. At the same time, and for the same reason, Lacan relativizes the func-
tion of the Name-of-the-Father and, from the early 196 0s, speaks of the Names-of-
the-Father in the plural.^55 The real hole in the Symbolic can now be corked in many
different ways. The Name-of-the-Father represents the standard way in which this
is achieved; however, it does not follow that the Name-of-the-Father is more struc-
tural than any other (perverse) Master-Signifier: indeed, these are now deemed
equally efficient in (phallically) suturing the open structure. This contradicts those
parts of Seminar V in which the formation of the ego-ideal through an identifica-
tion with the symbolic father—that is, as an effect of the instauration of the Name-
of-the-Father—was structurally opposed to the formation of “pathological”
Master-Signifiers in the case of perverts.^56
As I anticipated in Chapter 3 , another strictly related consequence of the bar-
ring of the Other is the perfect superimposition of the Name-of-the-Father with
the symbolic phallus Φ, two notions which Lacan had made every effort to dif-
ferentiate in 1958. This can again be demonstrated by comparing two particularly
dense passages from Seminar V with one taken from “Subversion of the Subject.”
From different perspectives, they all attempt to elucidate the algebraic notation S
(A barred), which should be read as “the signifier of the lack in the Other.” Here
is the first quotation from Seminar V:
Just as we have defined the paternal signifier as the signifier which, in the locus of
the Other, poses and authorizes the game of the signifiers, so there is another privi-
leged signifierwhich has as an effect the constitution in the Other of what follows,
[namely something] which changes its nature—this is why the symbol of the
Other is here barred: [the Other] is not purely and simply the locus of speech but,