Discover published sets by community

A realm beyond symbolic order that is impossible for us to fully articulate or understand; a sense of the ineffable and pre-linguistic.

A realm of images and illusions; linked to the mirror stage where the ego is developed; characterized by dual relationships.

The realm of language, law, social structure, and the Oedipal complex; established through the prohibition of incest.

A developmental stage where a child first recognizes their own image as separate from themselves, leading to ego formation.

The symbolic authority figure that represents the power of language and law to interdict incestuous desire.

The central concept to Lacan's theory, stating that desire originates from a fundamental sense of loss.

The perpetual movement driven by lack, oriented towards something that is always perceived as missing.

The symbolic order and the structures of social authority and language that regulate the subject's interactions.

A symbolic signifier of power and the presence of the absence in the realm of the Symbolic; not equivalent to the male genital organ.

The child's psychosexual conflicts with the mother and father, leading to identification with the same-sex parent.

The unconscious perceived as an external place where the 'treasure trove of signifiers' and the subject's true speech lies.

The object of desire that is never attainable but motivates much of a person's actions and fantasies.

A paradoxical concept signifying extreme pleasure that ultimately becomes pain, linked to the Real.

Unlike the ordinary act of looking, the Lacanian gaze is the anxious sense that one is being viewed as an object.

In Lacanian theory, a being that is constituted by language and the unconscious, marked by a fundamental division or split.

A re-interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis focusing on the centrality of language and desire in the human psyche.