119 .The Seminar. Book VII,p. 63 (emphasis added).
12 0. For the mother as Thing, see especially ibid., pp.67‒69. Lacan’s (inconsistent) tran-
scendent stance in connection with this notion is in any case far more multifaceted than
that of the vast majority of its commentators. First of all, critics usually fail to ac-
knowledge that such a stance applies almost exclusively to Seminar VII; secondly, they
fail to recognize that the Thing is the negationof the primordial Real; thirdly, they inno-
cently tend to think the presymbolic whole of mother and child in terms of an actual
union between two distinct subjects which is later interrupted by the intervention of
the father (the symbolic law). (For an exemplary mistaken account of the mother‒child
“real” relationship, see B. Lichtenberg Ettinger, “Weaving a Trans-subjective Tress or
the Matrixial sinthome,” in Re-Inventing the Symptom: Essays on the Final Lacan,ed. L. Thurston
[New York: Other Press, 2002 ], pp.83‒109.)
121 .The Seminar. Book VII,p. 57.
122. The Thing is described as “the causeof the most fundamental human passion” in ibid.,
p. 97.
123. Ibid., p. 70 (my translation).
124. Ibid., p. 55.
125. Ibid., p. 20.
126. Ibid., p. 223.
127. These arguments from Seminar VII are also valid for the following Seminars if only one
substitutes object a qualost object for the transcendence of the lost Thing.
128. J.-A. Miller, “Extimité,” in Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society,ed. M.
Bracher (New York: New York University Press, 199 4), p. 26.
129 .The Seminar. Book VII,p. 71. See also ibid., pp. 101 , 13 9, 198.
13 0. Ibid., p. 71.
131. M. Safouan, Lacaniana: Les séminaires de Jacques Lacan, 1953–1963(Paris: Fayard, 2001 ),
p.13 8.
13 2.The Seminar. Book VII,p. 112 (my translation).
13 3. Ibid., p. 99 (my translation).
13 4. This level of the Imaginary should not to be confused with the imaginary object of self-
conscious ego-logical knowledge.
13 5.The Seminar, Book VII,p. 99 (my translation).
13 6. Ibid., p. 118. D. Porter’s far from impeccable English translation of Seminar VII omits
this important phrase altogether.
13 7. One should, strictly speaking, distinguish “the Other thing” (l’Autre chose) from the
other thing (autre chose) in which the Thing is found: the Thing is essentially a tran-
scendent Other thing inasmuch as it is never completely refound in the other thing(s)
in which it is found. Thus this transcendent Autre chose“is at the same time la Non-chose”
whose “Non- is certainly not individualized in a signifying way” (ibid., p.13 6, my
translation); as we have seen, the Non-Thing qua holeis indeed outside of the signifier.notes to pages 132–141