LacanianOnline

  When AI Becomes a Mirror of Law, Kindness, and Our Missing Limits The Father as a Function in Lacanian Theory In Lacanian theory, the father is not merely a person, but a function —a symbolic structure introduced through the Name-of-the-Father ( le Nom-du-Père ), a French phrase that also plays on the homophone “No of the Father.” This double meaning captures the essence of the concept: the imposition of limits, laws, and the fundamental no that structures our entry into the symbolic order—the world of language, meaning, and social norms. These norms are often transmitted by the biological father, but not always. In cases of absence or failure, the role may be taken up by other figures—or even by cultural systems such as the mother, grandparents, teachers, institutions, or screens. Growing Up Without a Symbolic Father Long before artificial intelligence, children without a present—or fully present—father were already growing up immersed in media. Television, comics,...

  He wasn’t obviously cruel. He smiled. Sometimes, he laughed. Sometimes, he held you in a way that made you believe—just for a moment—that the world was safe. But cruelty doesn’t always announce itself with a whip. Sometimes, it seduces. Sometimes, it withholds. Sometimes, it tortures quietly—in ways so subtle, so enduring, they echo through a lifetime. This isn’t a personal diary—though it could be. It’s a map of a kind of fatherhood that has marked many lives, including mine: Fathers who love by dominating, who enjoy through deception, who mask abuse with charm and authority. The perverse father What Is a Perverse Father? The term "perverse" often gets lost in moral panic and sexualized caricature. But in Lacanian psychoanalysis, perversion is not primarily about acts — it is about structure. Specifically: a père-version — a psychic configuration in which the child turns toward the father not as a bearer of symbolic law or a storyteller of limits, but as one ...

  The Woman Does Not Exist: Lacan, Gender, and the Fantasy of Identity In the previous post, we explored Jacques Lacan’s provocative statement: “There is no such thing as a sexual relationship.” We clarified that this doesn’t mean there’s no sex — but that sex, in Lacan’s view, doesn’t guarantee mutual understanding or symbolic unity between partners. Instead, it often reveals a fundamental gap between subjects. In this post, we’ll explore another equally disruptive idea in Lacanian psychoanalysis: “The Woman does not exist.” Let’s be clear: Lacan is not denying the existence of real women. He is not saying women as people don’t exist. Rather, he’s questioning the existence of The Woman — with a capital W — as a stable, universal essence or truth about what it means to be a woman. What Does It Mean to Say "The Woman Does Not Exist"? Lacan’s phrase "La femme n'existe pas" challenges the notion of a singular, coherent idea of womanhood. In psychoanalytic terms...

Sex sells, they say. But what if sex doesn't say what we think it says? What if it whispers something else — something deeper, murkier, sadder, and more desperate? According to Jacques Lacan, one of the sharpest minds in the psychoanalytic tradition: “Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel” — there is no such thing as a sexual relationship. Not because people don’t fuck. But because in the very act of fucking, they’re not meeting each other. They’re missing each other. Let’s be honest: sex is rarely just about bodies. It’s about compensating a lack. It’s about communicating something in code. It’s about feeding a hunger that isn’t even physical. Sometimes, it’s just about not being alone for a few minutes. Sex as a Symptom Think of a cat. A cat purrs not only when it’s happy, but also when it's anxious, scared, in pain — it self-soothes through sound. They don’t have enough words to express what they feel. They come to us, and we like that, because it reminds us of o...

There is a toy the cat I live with, F., loves. A small, insignificant object by itself—a hair band—but for her, it is everything. She plays with it, run with it, and then—loses it. Again and again, it disappears under the sofa. At first, I thought it was mere accident, an unfortunate consequence of her wild enthusiasm. I would retrieve it (with difficulty, moving the whole big and heavy sofa), place it back in front of her, and she would resume the game. Then I noticed something strange: F. was not merely losing the toy—she was hiding it, pushing it carefully under the sofa and then wait. Not searching for it, not retrieving it herself, but waiting for it to come out, like a mouse. This is the game. Not the toy, not the having of it, but the not having it—the game of waiting. Lacan taught us that desire is not for the object itself, but for the dream of having it, and the wonderful things that it will make us feel. The objet petit a , that little elusive remainder, is not what we want...

Evil, as an action, could be a thought, but that is usually forgotten, a damned intranscendent mental Sin. In general, evil is only evil when it becomes action and comes out of us as a manifestation of our darkness. But, as an action, it is not inherently evil; rather, it is evil only in relation to other actions or, better yet, perceptions of actions—interpretations. Above all, evil is a function of one's relationship with one's manque, the fundamental lack that structures one's desire. Most of the time, what is evil is not determined by an external reaction, but by the accusation of one's inner Other, nor by the moral codifications that attempt to define it. Rather, evil’s true weight emerges in the subjective coordinates of one's own lack, in how one's act situates itself in relation to this void that constitutes one. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the subject is always structured around the manque-à-être—the lack of being. It is this absence that fuels desire, ...