Lacan; Anxiety...Desire...Lack...objet petit a
In the seminar of 1960–1, Lacan stresses the relationship of anxiety to desire; anxiety is a way of sustaining desire when the object is missing and, conversely, desire is a remedy for anxiety, something easier to bear than anxiety itself (Seminar 8, 430). He also argues that the source of anxiety is not always internal to the subject, but can often come from another, just as it is transmitted from one animal to another in a herd; ‘if anxiety is a signal, it means it can come from another’ (Seminar 8, 427). This is why the analyst must not allow his own anxiety to interfere with the treatment, a requirement which he is only able to meet because he maintains a desire of his own, the desire of the analyst (Seminar 8, 430).
In the seminar of 1962–3, entitled simply ‘Anxiety’, Lacan argues that anxiety is an affect, not an emotion, and furthermore that it is the only affect which is beyond all doubt, which is not deceptive (see also Seminar 11, 41). Whereas Freud distinguished between fear (which is focused on a specific object) and anxiety (which is not), Lacan now argues that anxiety is not without an object (n’est pas sans objet); it simply involves a different kind of object, an object which cannot be symbolised in the same way as all other objects. This object is objet petit a, the object-cause of desire, and anxiety appears when something appears in the place of this object. Anxiety arises when the subject is confronted by the desire of the Other and does not know what object he is for that desire.
It is also in this seminar that Lacan links anxiety to the concept of lack. All desire arises from lack, and anxiety arises when this lack is itself lacking; anxiety is the lack of a lack. Anxiety is not the absence of the breast, but its enveloping presence; it is the possibility of its absence which is, in fact, that which saves us from anxiety. Acting out and passage to the act are last defences against anxiety.
Anxiety is also linked to the mirror stage. Even in the usually comforting experience of seeing one’s reflection in the mirror there can occur a moment when the specular image is modified and suddenly seems strange to us. In this way, Lacan links anxiety to Freud’s concept of the uncanny (Freud, 1919h).
Whereas the seminar of 1962–3 is largely concerned with Freud’s second theory of anxiety (anxiety as signal), in the seminar of 1974–5 Lacan appears to return to the first Freudian theory of anxiety (anxiety as transformed libido). Thus he comments that anxiety is that which exists in the interior of the body when the body is overcome with phallic jouissance (Lacan, 1974–5: seminar of 17 December 1974).
Dylan Evans - An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge; 1996.
