a (paradoxical) “guarantee” of the function of the Other as lacking, desiring Other.
In other words, assuming symbolic castration means rendering one’s own lack the
counterpart of the (nonphantasmatic) lack in the Other: the subject thus gives the
Other what he does not have—his real desire—instead of replying to his incessant
demands.^142 In contrast to this, the neurotic does not “make of his castration what
the Other [really] lacks” beyond the dialectic of demand.^143
Although Lacan does not say it explicitly in Seminar X, castration in this second
sense is nothing less than the aim of psychoanalytic treatment, a precursor of what
in later years will appropriately be named the “traversing [quaundoing] of the fun-
damental fantasy.” At this stage, however, one set of important questions remains
unanswered: can we concretely circumscribe a viable“beyond” of neurosis? Is the
ethical task of psychoanalysis to induce anxiety so that the subject may fully
assume castration/“pure” desire?^144 And, most importantly, what is there to be
done afterthe subject has assumed symbolic castration, positivized lack in self-
consciousness, given that this same process necessarily involves (temporary) de-
subjectivation? Despite the fact that a detailed examination of these ethical (and
political) issues remains beyond the scope of my book, I shall nevertheless attempt
to provide some introductory remarks in the next two sections, dedicated to the
notion of jouissance.
5 4 Pure Desire, Jouissance,and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Throughout his discussion of anxiety in Seminar X, Lacan repeatedly affirms that
the “framed” Real (of desire) with which the subject is in contact in the fantasy
must necessarily be related to the jouissanceof the Other.^145 In one important pas-
sage, he then specifies that “jouissancecan knowthe Other only through this remain-
der, a”;^146 in parallel, he proposes the existence of a “subject of jouissance” whom
“one can isolate only in a mythical way,” without ever knowing it.^147 This is to say
that if, on the one hand, really existing jouissance,the jouissancethat can be known, is
present only in the Real-of-the-Symbolic, in the object aof the fantasy as para-
doxical representation of lack, on the other, pure jouissancebelongs to the mythical
presymbolic Real. One could well argue that these two basic definitions of jouissance
with regard to the Real already inform Seminar VII, and possibly provide its broad-
est framework. Indeed, toward the end of this seminar, Lacan openly makes the
same point; he suggests that “the Other–thing... which lies beyond is... the li-
bido,” yet, simultaneously, “the only moment of jouissancethat man knowsoccurs at
the site where fantasies are produced.”^148