68. The mother, while perfectly satisfying the child’s need, may “overload” his cries and turn
them into signifiers, something as simple as “Look how happy he is, since I am such a
perfect mum!”
69 .Le séminaire livre IV,p. 131.
70. See S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle,in SE, XVIII, pp.14‒15.
71. Ibid., p. 15.
72. J. Lacan, Écrits: A Selection(London: Tavistock, 1977 ), p. 103.
73. Ibid., p.10 4. See also Le séminaire livre IV,p. 51.
74. Ibid., p. 48.
75. See, for example, Écrits: A Selection,p. 189.
76 .Le séminaire livre IV,p. 38.
77. “Think about what happens when you ask for a book in a library. You are told that it is
missing from its place.... This means that the librarian lives in an entirely symbolic
world!” (ibid., p. 38 ; see also ibid., p. 218 ).
78. Ibid., p. 123.
79 .Le séminaire livre V,p. 202.
80. Ibid., p. 226.
81 .Le séminaire livre IV,p. 224.
82 .Le séminaire livre V,p. 226.
83. Ibid.
84. See, for example, ibid., pp.165‒166.
85 .Le séminaire livre IV,p. 242. See also Le séminaire livre V,p. 193.
86 .Le séminaire livre V,p.19 4.
87. Ibid., p. 187.
88. Ibid., p.19 0.
89. See ibid., pp.192‒193.
90. Ibid., p.19 4. Kerslake overlooks this fundamental point when he claims that, in Lacan,
the “primordial symbolization” of the “mother who ‘comes and goes’... seems to
take place before,that is, independently of, the law of the father” (C. Kerslake, “Rebirth
through Incest: On Deleuze’s Early Jungianism,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
9 , no. 1 [April 2004 ], p. 151 ). On the basis of this incorrect assumption—which, more-
over, fails to take into consideration the retroactive nature of Lacan’s account of the
Oedipus complex—the author infers three highly misleading conclusions: ( 1 ) there
are “dormant quasi-Jungian claims on behalf of the mother in Lacan’s work” (ibid.,
p.13 6); ( 2 ) insofar as Lacan disavows these claims, his “account of the Oedipus com-
plex is open to ‘problematisation’ from within” (ibid., p.13 6); ( 3 ) we should neatly
distinguish the early Lacan of “Les complexes familiaux,” who gives an important rolenotes to pages 73–82