Why the Other Must Have Loss

The neurotic subject depends on the big Other. This dependence is essentially that the starting point of neurotic desire is the needs of the big Other . The neurotic dependence on the big Other also reveals what the neurotic subject really needs from the big Other. Love. What is love? Love is a kind of "permission" for desire . Desire is just so dependent on the needs of the big Other.

Lacan suggests that the so-called "symptom" is a question of separating desire from need. When can desire break away from its dependence on need? When can the subject desire what it does not need? The complete genital stage. But this is purely theoretical. In fact, desire can never be a "purely natural" desire to demand. The reason why pure natural desire does not exist is that pure natural desire cannot be expressed.

Desire always comes from the question of the needs of the big Other, "What do you want?" Of course, the subject cannot answer this question once and for all. Then the subject finds himself becoming the question "What do you want?" thrown to him by the big Other. Interestingly, this question is once again thrown back to the subject after he develops sexual desire.

The typical example of such a subject is Little Hans. All the questions he asks his big Other, that is, his mother, about his penis are actually "What is desire?" And his mother's answer is always, "It's disgusting." I have heard too many criticisms of Little Hans' mother, but at least these answers themselves are not out of line. How can the big Other give a clear answer to "What do you want?" Once the answer is clear, the metonymy ends.

As mentioned above, Little Hans raised the question of "desire" by throwing out a brick to attract jade. The brick that was thrown out here is the penis, the penis. In Little Hans' case, it can only be a penis in a narrow sense. But this penis, as an object of desire in Lacan, is a phallic object.

The mother's praise of her son's penis is obviously not a rejection of her son's desire. On the contrary, in the mother's praise, the son's penis, the object, becomes the agalma of the mother's desire. But for the son, the appearance of agalma is a degradation of his subjectivity. He is now being praised as an object, and the mother's desire for him itself is devalued.

Finally, let's talk about this object-phallus. Phallus is only the most special object in the field of the big Other. This object is the product of the degradation of the status of the big Other. In other words, this object a, in castration, is minus phi, which is the symbolization of the big Other's own lack. Only such a big Other with a lack, Lacan's original words are "the big Other in the intellectual sense", is a big Other that the subject trusts and will respond to the subject's needs, which makes the subsequent production of desire possible .

Only when the lack of the big Other itself is symbolized can the various dialectics surrounding castration have a foothold.