Sinthome

The "sinthome" is a concept introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar "Le sinthome" (1975-76). According to Lacan, "sinthome" is an archaic way of spelling the French word "symptôme", meaning symptom. The seminar is a continuing elaboration of his topology, extending the previous seminar's focus ("RSI") on the Borromean Knot and an exploration of the writings of James Joyce. Lacan redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of his topology of the subject.

In "Psychoanalysis and its Teachings" (Écrits) Lacan views the symptom as inscribed in a writing process, not as ciphered message which was the traditional notion. In his seminar "L'angoisse" (1962-63) he states that the symptom does not call for interpretation: in itself it is not a call to the Other but a pure jouissance addressed to no one. This is a shift from the linguistic definition of the symptom - as a signifier - to his assertion that "the symptom can only be defined as the way in which each subject enjoys ("jouit") the unconscious in so far as the unconscious determines the subject." He goes from conceiving the symptom as a message which can be deciphered by reference to the unconscious structured like a language to seeing it as the trace of the particular modality of the subject's "jouissance". "Sinthome" then designates a signifying formulation beyond analysis: it is what allows one to live by providing the essential organization of "jouissance". The aim of the cure is to identify with the sinthome.

This shift from linguistics to topology constitutes the status of the sinthome as unanalyzable. The seminar extends the theory of the Borromean Knot, which in "RSI" (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) had been proposed as the structure of the subject, by adding the "sinthome" as the fourth ring to the triad already mentioned, tying together a knot which constantly threatens to come undone. Since meaning ("sens") is already figured within the knot, at the intersection of the Symbolic and the Imaginary, it follows that the function of the "sinthome" - knotting together the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic - is beyond meaning.

According to Lacan, faced in his childhood by the absence of the Name of the Father, Joyce managed to avoid psychosis by deploying his art as "suppléance", that is a supplementary cord in the subjective knot. Lacan emphasizes Joyce's epiphanies as instances of radical foreclosure (foreclusion) in which the real forecloses meaning. Joyce's texts entailed a special relation to language, its destructive refashioning as "sinthome": the invasion of the Symbolic order by the subject's private "jouissance". The concept of sinthome in its particular relations to creativity is connected to the late Lacanian concept of "feminine supplementary jouissance". To Lacan, topology is conceived as a form of writing, aiming to figure that which escapes the Imaginary. Thus Joyce becomes a "saint homme" who by refusing any imaginary solution, was able to invent a procedure of using language to organize "jouissance".

ources

* [http://www.lacan.com/seminars1a.htm The Seminars of Jacques Lacan]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415135222/ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis - Dylan Evans]
* [http://www.ecampus.com/book/1590510135 On the Sinthome in the final Lacan]
* [http://web.missouri.edu/~stonej/ Jack W. Stone's Joyce/Lacan/Sinthome]
* [http://www.lacan.com/frameXIII3.htm The Nora whom Joyce Knew - David Hayman] Lacanian Ink 13
* [http://www.lacan.com/frameXI3.htm Joyce through the Lacan Glass - Patrick Healy] Lacanian Ink 11
* [http://www.lacan.com/frameXI2.htm From Joyce-the Symptom - Slavoj Zizek] Lacanian Ink 11

External links

* [http://www.lacan.com/rolleyes.htm Chronology of Jacques Lacan]
* [http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm.htm Lacan Dot Com]