innovative point of reference—one that was never satisfied with any structuralist
or poststructuralist talk of a “death of the subject”—and, what is more, must care-
fully be expounded.
So what about the Lacaniansubject? Where is he? In very general terms, one
could suggest that, from the early 196 0s onward, Lacan’s subject amounts to an ir-
reducible lack—the real other as the inherent impasse andprecondition of the Sym-
bolic—which must activelybe confronted and assumed. Therefore, this notion of
subjectivity is profoundly incompatible with any philosophy—from deconstruc-
tive doxato certain mistaken readings of Lacan^11 —which limits itself to delineating
the contours of a vanishing substanceless subject “at a safe distance”: the Lacanian
subject is a subjectivizedlack, nota lackingsubject or subject of impossibility, even
though he presupposes the assumption and overcoming of a purely negative mo-
ment. As we shall see in the final chapter, this is valid both at the level of the child’s
entry into the symbolic order—the moment at which the purely negative lack of
demand is reversed and positivized into the being of desire as lack-of-being—and
at the level of the end of psychoanalytic treatment understood as a “deeper” as-
sumption of lack.The present work is primarily concerned with the subject who has attained a “nor-
mal” symbolic identification by successfully resolving his Oedipus complex. The
most noticeable consequence of this approach is that it will not be possible to carry
out a detailed comparison of the different models of subjectivity which Lacan de-
duces from the clinical categories he elaborates; this is particularly the case with
regard to the separation of the two kinds of neurosis (hysteria and obsessional neu-
rosis) and the way in which they should both be opposed to perversion. On the
other hand, the necessity clearly to demarcate successful subjectivation from its
complete failure will require a thorough consideration of the way the notion of
psychosis evolves throughout Lacan’s oeuvre.
There are two main reasons for my choice to restrict myself primarily to a study
of the “normal” subject: first, the belief that any theoretical claim concerning spe-
cific clinical conditions should be supported by adequate psychoanalytic experi-
ence—which I do not possess and whose evidence would in any case lie beyond
the scope of a book of philosophy. Here the reader should be reminded that when-
ever Lacan scrutinizes a clinical distinction, for example the distinction between
neurotic and perverse forms of subjectivation, he unfailingly avails himself of case
studies; despite their incontestable importance, philosophical, purely abstract for-
mulations are in these instances usually confined to marginal remarks.
Secondly and more importantly, this book acknowledges that Lacan progres-
sively questions the very existence of a “normal” subject. The border betweenintroduction