“normality” and “abnormality” is gradually blurred; thus every inquiry into the
former inevitably leads to the latter. In a sense, one might well argue that Lacan has
left “normality” behind insofar as the “standard” version of subjectivation is made
to overlap with what could be named a “forced neurotization.”^12 Yet this univer-
salization of neurosis does not alone suffice to account for the “abnormal” char-
acter of the “standard” subject. As we shall closely examine at the beginning of
Chapter 4 , after the recovery of a structural lack in the symbolic Other, Lacan also
believes that all subjects are potentially psychotics, and can obviate this condition
only by means of a “suture” which is epiphenomenal. From the standpoint of the
symbolic structure, psychosis logically precedes “normality.” In addition to this,
in his late work Lacan regards perversion as a generalized hegemonic social struc-
ture (epitomized by the capitalist discourse) while, at the same time, the “stan-
dard” neurotic resolution of the Oedipus complex should itself be considered as a
“père-version,” a veiling of the lack in the Other.^13 To cut a long story short, one could
conclude that the increasing difficulty of accurately delimiting a “normal” subject
in Lacan’s work is compensated for by the awareness that, for him, “normality”
necessarily partakes of neurosis, perversion, and even psychosis.
On this point, the vicissitudes of the notion of desire are exemplary: through-
out Seminars V and VI, although not without oscillations, Lacan still seems to rely
on an underlying idea of “normal” desire which he often evokes but never fully
elucidates.^14 Here “normal” desire is definitely opposed to neurotic desire—inso-
far as the latter is subjected to the demand of the Other—and as such tacitly over-
laps with a no better specified notion of “pure” desire. When, in Seminar VII,
“pure” desire is explicitly posited as “tragic” desire, Lacan is obliged to reassess his
implicit identification of “normal” and “pure” desire. From this point on, the for-
mer will always be associated more openly with neurotic desire, and the neurotic
subject will be normalized.
With these specifications in mind, Part I of this book focuses on the subject of the
Imaginary, and provides a precise account of the way in which the ego comes to be
defined as an imaginary function by Lacan. The ego corresponds to the subject’s
identifying alienation in the imaginary other and, given its narcissistic-specular
nature, should not be confused with the subject of the unconscious. Although such
an imaginary alienation is a noneliminable precondition of the subject as such, its
utterly (self-)destructive tendencies can nevertheless be overcome only by the sub-
ject’s introjection of the symbolic agency of the ego-ideal. Here, it is my intention
to emphasize the way in which, according to Lacan’s anti-Darwinian stance, the
subject’s disordered Imaginary is, first and foremost, proof of man’s—contin-
gently successful—“dis-adapted” evolution. On this general basis, in this part I also