See The Seminar. Book III,pp. 147 , 151 ; Le séminaire livre IV,p. 199. For an attack upon the no-
tion of chronological psychogenesis, see ibid., p. 55.
Le séminaire livre V,p. 198.
The triadic sequence frustration–privation–castration is not without relation with the di-
alectical unfolding of the three complexes as expounded in “Les complexes familiaux.”
Freud argues that around the age of five, both boys and girls believe that there is only one
genital organ, the penis, and therefore suppose that those who do not possess it have
been castrated.
Le séminaire livre IV,p. 63.
Ibid., p. 66.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 67.
Ibid.
This very first symbolization, the scansion of the appeal/cry, is notactively assumed by
the child insofar as it is basically a directconsequence of/reaction to the (visual) presence/
absence of the symbolic mother. In other words, given the perfect homeostasis in which
the child is supposed to live at this stage, given that the mother is always present/
absent at the righttime, the appeal/cry cannot “actively” be caused by internal need. Here
the cry is always “joyful,” it is not yet related to lack.
14 .Le séminaire livre IV,p. 68 (emphasis added).
- In this sense the relation with the object iseffectively “direct.”
16 .Le séminaire livre IV,p. 68 (emphasis added). Lacan is not precise on one specific point: the
mother is a symbolic agent and not, strictly speaking, a symbolic object. The symbolic
object as such can emerge only when the symbolic mother does not answer the child’s
appeal.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., p. 175.
Lacan himself evokes the “virtual” status of the Real in another passage of Seminar IV; see
ibid., p. 32.
On the productivity of the lack of object, see ibid., pp. 36 , 56.
See, for example ibid., p. 37 : “Frustration is, as such, the field of unrestrained demands
[exigences], with no law.”
Ibid., p. 81 ; see also ibid., p.19 2.
Ibid., p. 70.
Ibid. (emphasis added). See also ibid., pp.30‒31.
Ibid., p. 70. As we shall see in more detail at the end of this chapter, the imaginary phal-
lus is also a privileged object for men.