Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., pp.30 ‒31. In “Les complexes familiaux,” Lacan unequivocally stresses the cul-
tural origin of allthree complexes. I believe that this claim is insufficiently accounted
for in this early work, and is thus incompatible with Lacan’s discussion of the mirror
stage as ultimately based on Gestalten.The precise coordinates of the interplay between
the “instinctual” Imaginary and the “cultural” Symbolic in the three complexes is re-
elaborated and explained in detail in Le séminaire livre IV. La relation d’objet, 1956–1957(Paris:
Seuil, 199 4) through the triadic (and retroactive) sequence frustration‒privation‒
castration.
“Les complexes familiaux,” p. 43.
As early as 195 0, Lacan sets out in a succinct manner the three fundamental, intercon-
nected tenets of his future ethics of psychoanalysis: (a) following Saint Paul, “it is the law
that creates sin”; (b) consequently, against Lombroso’s criminology, “criminal instincts
do not exist”—which is the same as stating, against Sade, that “there is no absolute
crime”; (c) in parallel, following Freud’s Totem and Taboo,Law is based on a primordial
crime (see Écrits,pp. 126 , 146 , 149 , 13 0).
The key text for Lacan’s dialectical reading of psychoanalytic technique is “Intervention
on the Transference” ( 1951 ), in Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne,ed.
J. Mitchell and J. Rose (London: Macmillan, 1982 ).
“[A] vital crisis redoubles itself in a psychic crisis.... A vital tension resolves itself in a
mental intention” (“Les complexes familiaux,” p. 31 ).
In all complexes, there is indeed a strict connection between the rise of anxiety and the
“precipitation” of the subject in an alienating identification. The crisis which precedes a
given complex (its synthesis) is accompanied by anxiety: Lacan demonstrates how this
point is derived from Klein (The Seminar. Book I,p. 69 ). Even in his later theories of the sub-
ject, Lacan will always link anxiety to what he will call “subjective destitution,” and the
consequent emergence of a new form of identification. In the early 19 6 0s, Lacan will
dedicate two consecutive years of his Seminar to the discussion of identification and
anxiety.
“Les complexes familiaux,” p. 41.
72 .The Seminar. Book I,p. 146.
It is true that Lacan is, in general, heavily indebted to Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropol-
ogy: however, the “structuralist” discussion of the Oedipus complex in “Les complexes
familiaux” dates back to 193 8(in this article, Lacan briefly refers to the work of earlier
anthropologists such as Frazer and Malinowski). It was therefore published eleven years
before Lévi-Strauss’s fundamental text, The Elementary Structures of Kinship(19 49).
Miller, “An Introduction to Seminars I and II,” p. 20.
Nobus similarly argues that, despite the development of Lacan’s theories during the
195 0s and 19 6 0s, the notion of the mirror stage “did not involve a radical modification
of the original description” (D. Nobus, “Life and Death in the Glass: A New Look at the
Mirror Stage,” in Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis,ed. D. Nobus [London: Rebus Press,
1998 ], p.12 0).