# Sinthome

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***Sinthome*** (sɛ̃tom) is a concept introduced by [Jacques Lacan](/source/Jacques_Lacan) in his seminar *Le sinthome* (1975–76). It redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of the role of the [subject](/source/Subject_(philosophy)) outside of analysis, where enjoyment is made possible through creative identification with the symptom.

## Overview

The idea of the *sinthome* was the final stage in Lacan's exploration of the Freudian conception of the symptom which gradually emerges through analysis, and especially Freud's conception of [neuroses](/source/Neurosis) which emerge from a struggle for pleasure.[1] Lacan first viewed the symptom as something inscribed in a writing process of the [unconscious](/source/Unconscious_mind), not as a completed ciphered message calling for interpretation: it is not a call to [the Other](/source/Other_(philosophy)) and has no addressee. For example, in the first seminar, explaining the Freudian concept of the "return of the [repressed](/source/Repression_(psychoanalysis))", Lacan compares the emergence of the symptom with a scenario posited by American [cyberneticist](/source/Cybernetics) [Norbert Wiener](/source/Norbert_Wiener):

Wiener posits two beings each of whose temporal dimension moves in the opposite direction from the other. To be sure, that means nothing, and that is how things which mean nothing all of a sudden signify something, but in a quite different domain. If one of them sends a message to the other, for example a square, the being going in the opposite direction will first of all see the square vanishing, before seeing the square. That is what we see as well. The symptom initially appears to us as a trace, which will only ever be a trace, one which will continue not to be understood until the analysis has got quite a long way, and until we have discovered its meaning.[2]

In the third seminar on the psychoses, Lacan defined [psychosis](/source/Psychosis) as the intrusion of [foreclosure](/source/Foreclosure_(psychoanalysis)), or *Verwerfung*, into the subject, contrasted with [neurosis](/source/Neurosis) as the grounding of the subject in repression. The topic of psychosis provided him with a path for the continuation of his exploration of the symptom, with Freud's case study of [Daniel Paul Schreber](/source/Daniel_Paul_Schreber) used in particular as an illustration of the misstep that can be made in analysis to attempt to interpret the symptom. Considering Lacan's reading of the case study where he notes that Schreber used common language to explain his otherwise expressively rich psychoses,[3] approaching the *sinthome* but failing to escape the detrimental symptoms of psychosis, [Russell Grigg](/source/Russell_Grigg_(philosopher)) observes that "there is a moment when [Schreber] is called, interpellated, by—or perhaps better 'in'—the [Name-of-the-Father](/source/Name_of_the_Father). This is when the lack of the signifier declares itself, and it is sufficient to trigger the psychosis."[4]

However, in the 1970s, he radically departed from the previous linguistic definition of the symptom as a [signifier](/source/Signified_and_signifier) with which [scenes](/source/Primal_scene) are constructed. This departure was accompanied by the idea of the *sinthome*, the process of "the idiosyncratic *[jouissance](/source/Jouissance)* of a particular subject",[5] functioning as a creative enjoyment of the symptom that intertwines with [the Real](/source/The_Real) to relay itself to [the Symbolic](/source/The_Symbolic) and [the Imaginary](/source/The_Imaginary_(psychoanalysis)), and as an escape from the struggle for pleasure caused by the symptom for the subject.

## Position in the Borromean knot

Lacan's shift from a lingual psychoanalysis to a topological psychoanalysis concluded with the status of the *sinthome* as unanalyzable. The seminar on the *sinthome* extends the theory of the Borromean knot, which in the *RSI* (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) seminar had been proposed as the structure of the subject by adding the *sinthome* as the fourth ring to the triad already mentioned, tying together a knot which constantly threatens to come undone. The topic of the seminar was the life and work of [James Joyce](/source/James_Joyce): "the sign of [Lacan's] entanglement is indeed Joyce, precisely inasmuch as what he puts forth, and in a way that is quite especially that of an artist because he has the know-how to pull it off, is the *sinthome*, and a *sinthome* such that there is nothing to be done to analyse it."[6]

Clinical psychologist Jonathan D. Redmond has suggested using the idea "to denote specific signifiers in the real that, for reasons specific to the individual, may take on a supplementary function in psychic structure. In this sense, the *sinthome* is 'a piece of the real' linking *jouissance* to a signifier that is able to take on the supplementary function of the Name-of-the-Father."[7] Since meaning (or *sens* in Lacan's seminars) is already figured within the knot, at the intersection of the Symbolic and the Imaginary, it follows that the function of the *sinthome*, knotting together [the Real](/source/The_Real), [the Imaginary](/source/The_Imaginary_(psychoanalysis)) and [the Symbolic](/source/The_Symbolic), is beyond meaning—especially in the framework of analysis—and is essentially a personal, idiosyncratic route to control over *jouissance*, [catharsis](/source/Catharsis) and unprecedented creativity. Roberto Harari writes in his study of the seminar, *How James Joyce Made His Name*, that it is "a question of the occurrence, without it being sought, of a certain experience that leads to the unique point of inventing one's own *sinthome*. […] The suffering entailed by the symptom is certainly not at work in the same way in the *sinthome*, linked as it is to the [epiphanic](/source/Epiphany_(literature)) quality of inventing something".[8]

### Žižek's interpretation

Extending from his use of the [Lacanian framework](/source/Lacanianism), Slovenian philosopher [Slavoj Žižek](/source/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek) variously expounds on the idea of the *sinthome*, in particular in *[The Sublime Object of Ideology](/source/The_Sublime_Object_of_Ideology)*. He asserts, working off of Lacan's general idea that enjoyment of the symptom as *sinthome* radicalizes the subject, that "symptom, conceived as *sinthome*, is […] the only point that gives consistency to the subject. In other words, symptom is the way we—the subjects—'avoid madness', […] through the binding of our enjoyment to a certain signifying, symbolic formation which assures a minimum of consistency to our [being-in-the-world](/source/Being-in-the-world)"; ultimately, in practice, "the final Lacanian definition of the end of the psychoanalytic process is identification with the symptom", and, in its aftermath, a collaboration between the subject and its symptom to make a *sinthome*, for instance with art, particularly with Lacan's initial example of James Joyce.[9]

## See also

- [Matheme](/source/Matheme)

## References

1. Freud, Sigmund (1964). "Introduction to *Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses*". *The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud*. Vol. XVII (1917–1919). [Hogarth Press](/source/Hogarth_Press). pp. 209–10.

1. Lacan, Jacques (1991). *The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954*. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 159. ISBN 0-393-30697-6.

1. Lacan, Jacques (1993). *The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses, 1955-1956*. W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 60–61. ISBN 978-0-415-10183-7.

1. Grigg, Russell (2008). *Lacan, Language, and Philosophy*. State University of New York. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-7914-7345-0.

1. Verhaeghe, Paul & Declercq, Frédéric (2002). "Lacan's Goal of Analysis: *Le Sinthome* or the Feminine Way". *Re-Inventing the Symptom: Essays on the Final Lacan*. Thurston, Luke (ed.). Other Press. p. 68. ISBN 9781590510131.

1. Lacan, Jacques (2016). *The Sinthome: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII*. Polity Books. p. 106. ISBN 978-1-5095-1000-9.

1. D. Redmond, Jonathan (2014). *Ordinary Psychosis and The Body: A Contemporary Lacanian Approach*. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-137-34530-1.

1. Harari, Roberto (2002). *How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the Final Lacan*. Other Books. p. 70. ISBN 1-892746-51-4.

1. Žižek, Slavoj (2008). *The Sublime Object of Ideology*. Verso Books. p. 81. ISBN 978-1-84467-300-1.

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Sinthome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinthome) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinthome?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.