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As Lacan explains, the phallus and its accompanying castration complex “cannot be solved by reducing things to biological data”,1 and even more, that “these facts reveal a relation between the subject and the phallus that forms without regard to the anatomical distinction between the sexes . . .”.2

What is the significance of the phallus then? This question brings us to the core of Lacan’s contribution: that the phallus is itself a signifying function. As he writes:

For the phallus is a signifier, a signifier whose function, in the intrasubjective economy of analysis, may lift the veil from the function it served in the mysteries. For it is the signifier that is destined to designate meaning effects as a whole, insofar as the signifier conditions them by its presence as signifier.3

Lacan is referencing the Dionysian mysteries, where the “demon of shame springs forth at the very moment the phallus is unveiled in the ancient mysteries (see the famous painting in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii)”.4

Lacan thus expands the phallus from a physical organ to an organon, or instrumental logic that governs human desire, language, and the unconscious. As Lacan says, “The phallus is the privileged signifier of this mark in which the role of Logos is wedded to the advent of desire”.5

His emphasis on the term mark in relation to the signifier also brings forth parallels with the Sanskrit term lingam, which means “phallus”, “mark”, “characteristic”, and “symptom”. In Indian Tantra, the lingam functions as a signifier for consciousness and is ritually worshipped as the form of Śiva.

This essay also prefigures Lacan’s later formulation that “there is no sexual relationship”. Lacan writes that “the phallus as a signifier provides the ratio of desire”6 and that “the demand for love can only suffer from a desire whose signifier is foreign to it”.7

Lacan concludes his essay with a remark that gives the phallus its profound significance: “The function of the phallic signifier touches here on its most profound relation: that by which the Ancients embodied therein the Nous and the Logos”.8

The phallus thus marks a signifying stand, a proportion in the unconscious that is its ungraspable constitution. Perhaps it is here, in the consciousness of our symptom, that we must meet the mark anew.

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00:00 - Introduction to Lacan’s "The Signification of the Phallus"
03:02 - Historical Context and the Definition of the Phallus
05:37 - The Logic of Being vs. Having and the Formula for Love
09:14 - The Castration Complex and the Structure of the Unconscious
15:48 - Posturing, Gender Binaryism, and the Fallible Symbolic Order
32:37 - Infantile Sexuality and the Origins of the Phallic Object
46:45 - Narcissism, Dialectics of Jealousy, and Transitivism
49:06 - The Phallus as a Signifier and the Dionysian Simulacrum
56:38 - "Lingam", Consciousness, and the Mark of the Signifier
01:01:01 - Meaning Effects, Incel Culture, and Hypermasculinity
01:04:24 - Evolution of the Phallus: From Imaginary Lack to Sexuation
01:06:25 - Logos, Lack, and the Advent of Desire
01:09:54 - Encountering the Lack of the Other (Che Vuoi?)
01:11:58 - The Splitting of Need, Demand, and Desire
01:18:48 - Fibonacci Spiral, Möbius Strip, and the Drive
01:25:54 - Objet a as the Cause of Desire

I will now place myself under the auspices of he who sometimes dons the philosopher’s garb, who—ambiguous—is more often to be sought in the comedian’s banter, but who is always encountered in the politician’s secretive action: the good logician, odious to the world.1

Lacan the logician will take us into the movement of time as a suspended motion, modulated in “the instant of the glance”, “the time for comprehending”, and “the moment of concluding”. With this, Lacan places the egoic subject within a temporal tension that signals anxiety:

The “I,” subject of the conclusive assertion, is isolated from the other—that is, from the relation of reciprocity—by a logical beat. The movement of the logical genesis of the “I” through a decanting of its own logical time largely parallels its psychological birth. Just as, let us recall, the psychological “I” emerges from an indeterminate specular transitivism, assisted by an awakened jealous tendency, the “I” in question here defines itself through a subjectification of competition with the other, in the function of logical time. As such, it seems to me to provide the essential logical form (rather than the so-called existential form) of the psychological “I”.2

Lacan is thus elaborating the temporal logic of the mirror stage—where the infant, standing before its own speculation, experiences an anticipatory movement of its body that remains suspended in the very instant of the glance.

Join us as we unfold Lacan’s riddling logic with our special guest, Nick Castellucci, co-host of the Vanishing Mediators channel.

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00:00 - 07:53 Lacan the Logician
07:54 - 24:01 Logic and Language in Western Philosophy
24:02 - 39:04 Kantian Ethics and Self-Authorization
39:05 - 50:55 Lacan's Sophism: Explaining the Prisoner's Dilemma
50:56 - 01:02:06 Signifying Motion and Phenomenological Time
01:02:07 - 1:20:00 Influencer Culture and the Anxiety of Verification
01:20:01 - 1:45:19 Logical Time in Analysis

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00:00 - 06:54 What is Ordinary Psychosis?

06:55 - 10:04 Latent Psychosis and Hidden Illness

10:05 - 13:54 Institutional Psychiatry

13:55 - 20:04 The Place of Psychosis

20:05 - 28:59 Psychosis and Neurosis

29:00 - 34:19 Symbolic Modes of Treatment

34:20 - 40:09 Psychedelics and Psychosis

40:10 - 45:04 Psychosis and Capitalism

45:05 - 50:59 Institutional Psychoanalysis

51:00 - 57:39 Psychoanalysis and Style

57:40 - 1:02:14 The Humanity of Analysis

1:02:15 - 1:08:09 The Lacanian School

1:08:10 - 1:14:39 Clinical Study Days and Misunderstanding Sexuality

1:14:40 - 1:21:14 Resisting Standardization

1:21:15 - 1:28:09 Virtual Analysis and the Presence of the Analyst

1:28:10 - 1:35:19 On-Demand Analysis and the Desire of the Analyst

1:35:20 - 1:41:59 Psychoanalysis as a Way of Life

1:42:00 - 1:47:36 Upcoming Events and Closing Reflections

About Michael McAndrew

Michael McAndrew is a poet and Lacanian psychoanalyst based in Denver, CO. He is a member of the Lacanian Compass.

Listeners who are intrigued by Lacan’s references to Indian linguistics in this section are referred to my recent essay, “A Hamlet on the Ganges”, which provides an extensive commentary on this thread in Lacan’s teaching and its implications for psychoanalysis.

00:00 - 05:46 The Three Moments in Freud and Lacan
05:47 - 25:27 Time and Punctuation in Analytic Technique
25:28 - 36:56 The Master-Slave Dialectic
36:57 - 46:48 Somatic Therapies and the Speaking Body
46:49 - 1:02:04 Indian Linguistics and Semantic Resonances
1:02:05 - 1:08:23 Recollection and Repetition
1:08:24 - 1:31:19 A Hamlet on the Ganges
1:31:20 - 1:37:57 Hysteria and Obsessionality
1:37:58 - 1:46:28 The Subject's Ego and His Discourse's I
1:46:29 - 1:51:12 Lacan's Short Session
1:51:13 - 2:00:00 What the Thunder Said

00:00 - 08:20 Language and Psychoanalysis
08:21 - 16:25 The Interpretation of Dreams
16:26 - 22:06 The Analyst as Scribe
22:07 - 40:03 The Signifying Field of Language
40:04 - 53:28 The Symbolic Order and the Law
53:29 - 58:39 The Structure of Symptoms
58:40 - 1:05:43 The Mark of Repression
1:05:44 - 1:12:14 Neurotic Regression in Jung
1:12:15 - 1:15:50 Jungian Image vs. Symbolic Law
1:15:51 - 1:22:03 Rapport vs. Transference in Medicine & Psychoanalysis
1:22:04 - 1:27:05 Truth, Knowledge, and Gnosis
1:27:06 - 1:30:50 Repetition and Desire
1:31:51 - 1:36:00 Synchrony and Diachrony
1:36:01 - 1:45:36 The Name of the Father
1:45:37 - 1:46:57 The Oedipal Constitution in Tibetan Medicine
1:48:58 - 1:49:07 Symbolic Possession
1:49-08 - 1:50:55 Poetics and Rhetoric
1:50:56 - 1:57:19 The Symbolic Father and the Function of the Name

In this episode, we discuss the preface, introduction, and first section of the essay, where Lacan begins to distinguish between "empty speech" and "full speech" in psychoanalysis.

Audio episodes are also available on Spotify. Video episodes are available our YouTube channel (embedded below).

00:00 - 2:12 Introduction to Function and Field
2:13 - 5:33 Lacan's Ambition and the Return to Freud
5:34 - 9:28 The Saussurean Paradigm and Language Theory
9:29 - 15:14 Lacan's Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis
15:15 - 22:54 The Three Problems in Psychoanalysis
22:55 - 32:31 The Oracular Vernacular of Psychoanalysis
32:32 - 33:37 Symbolic Transference and Countertransference
33:38 - 37:31 Empty Speech vs. Full Speech
37:32 - 50:31 The Copernican Revolution of Psychoanalysis
50:32 - 52:47 The Role of the Analyst as Symbolic Intermediary
52:48 - 1:00:37 The Sacramental Nature of Psychoanalysis
1:00:38 - 1:23:16 The Function of Speech in Psychoanalysis
1:23:17 - 1:24:22 The Three Poisons and Passions of Buddhism and Psychoanalysis
1:24:23 - 1:36:20 Speech, Desire, and History
1:36:21 - 1:50:04 Logical Time
1:50:05 - 1:52:03 Repetition and the Death Drive
1:52:04 - 2:00:00 Love, Grace, and the Redemption of Speech

I’m thrilled to introduce my podcast project, Parlêtre, co-hosted with my friend and colleague, Andrew Flores.

Parlêtre is a long-form podcast dedicated to the work of Jacques Lacan—where we explore the theoretical and clinical intersections of Lacanian psychoanalysis through free-associative conversation. Parlêtre is a neologism coined by Lacan from the French words parler (to speak) and être (to be). Parlêtre thus conveys the meaning of “speaking beings”, signifying the human field of the unconscious and its expression in the function of speech.

Parlêtre podcast exists as an invocation and enactment of analytic discourse, where we speak from the locus of our own desire and engagement with Lacan’s oeuvre. Parlêtre is an invitation to hear Lacan through the conversation of speaking beings—whether you are a philosopher, student, clinician, or simply curious about what psychoanalysis has to offer to the cipher of our mortal destiny.

We are inaugurating Parlêtre with a series of episodes exploring Lacan’s landmark essay, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis”. (This is the essay I commented upon in my recent publication, “A Hamlet on the Ganges”). Our first episode, “Empty Speech and Full Speech”, examines the preface, introduction, and first section of Lacan’s essay.

We hope you enjoy listening to or watching our first episode!

Stay tuned for our next episode by subscribing to our Patreon, or following us on Spotify, YouTube, or Instagram:

• Patreon

• YouTube Channel

• Spotify

• Instagram