Jacques Lacan has an extremely important place in the theory of Psychoanalysis. Colleges, institutes and professionals around the world focus on understanding how he viewed human behavior and treatment for problems ranging from the most serious to the simplest. Lacan's phrases for you to have a first contact with their proposals!

25 phrases by Jacques Lacan

In our selection of phrases from Lacan, we will briefly discuss some of the quotes we have chosen. You will see that they are separated by content groups with similar themes. In this way, you can do more focused reading on subjects that interest you if you so choose. Happy reading!

5 sentences by Lacan about the other

1 - You may know what you said, but never what another heard.

Well, we start our selection of Lacan's phrases by bringing some simple reflections that we often do without thinking. Who has never, in a fight, said that he was responsible for the things he said, but not for what the other heard?

It is nice to see this reasoning not only when arguing. Know that everything you are saying is free for others to interpret as they see fit. You can control your speech, polish it to control its possible interpretations. However, you have no control over how people receive each word. Knowing this is fundamental to the development of sensitivity.

2- To love is to give what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.

In this case, what is love, right? You no longer have it and you give this feeling to someone who doesn't want it. How to be happy then? For Lacan, you don't become happy in love when you love, since love is nothing more than an illusion. What we see in the other is a way to satisfy each other's needs and wants.

In this context, love would be a mutual disposition to satisfy what the other needs. Since the other doesn't have, you give; since you don't have, the other satisfies you.

3 - I love in you something more than you.

In the wake of what we said above, when you love, you don't love the person. What you see and love is the ability to be satisfied in your own needs. However, see that it is not necessarily a selfish desire. It is also about seeing the possibility of making yourself available to satisfy what seems to be lacking in the other. In Lacan, love looks like a comfortable arrangement that is meant to satisfy illusions.

4 - The role of the mother is the mother's desire. It is capital. The mother's desire is not something that can be endured like that, that is indifferent to them. It always carries havoc. A big crocodile in whose mouth you are - that's what the mother is. You don't know what might come into her mouth, slamming her mouth shut. That's what the mother's desire is.

Given that to love is to have desire, that is, to be satisfied and to seek to satisfy, the question of maternal love becomes extremely complex in Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is possible that the limits of satisfaction of the other's desire are broken, so as to bring catastrophic consequences to the relationship between mothers and children. The deeper the bonds of love are, the more delicate become the nuancesof the relationship.

5 - Love is impotent, even if it is reciprocal, because it ignores that it is only the desire to be.

Considering all the above, love can be reciprocal, resulting in a nice relationship. However, the feeling needs to be clarified. It is not the set of factors that we observe in romantic comedies, but only desire. It is the desire to be, to receive, to belong. To love is to desire.

5 sentences about desire

Since the discussion above ended on the nuances of desire, follow along with us 5 sentences by Lacan about desire!

• 6 - Desire as real is not of the order of the word, but of the act.
• 7 - There is something unconscious, that is, something in language that escapes the subject in its structure and its effects, and that there is always something at the level of language that is beyond consciousness. It is there that the function of desire can be situated.
• 8 - If there is an object of your desire, it is none other than yourself.
• 9 - Desire is the essence of reality.
• 10 - I propose that the only thing one can be guilty of, at least from an analytical perspective, is having given in to his desire.

5 sentences by Jacques Lacan about life

Now that you are a little more into what Lacan thought about desire, how about discovering his thoughts about life? You will find that at times his perception of the human experience is blunt, even a little too direct. However, try to see each of Lacan's sentences as a new way to analyze life experiences!

• 11 - I wait, but I don't expect anything.
• 12 - Each one reaches the truth that he is able to bear.
• 13 - Love is exchanging nothing for nothing!
• 14 - You don't go crazy if you want to.
• 15 - It is the truth of what this desire has been in your history that the subject screams through his symptom.

5 sentences about the unconscious

We couldn't let a text about Lacan's phrases not approach a theme so dear to psychoanalysts, which is the unconscious. You probably already know what Freud thought about it, or even Carl Jung. However, do you know Lacanian ideas? Check some of them out below!

• 16 - The unconscious is structured as a language.
• 17 - The pulsions are, in the body, the echo of the fact that there is a saying.
• 18 - There is undeniably enjoyment at the level where pain begins to appear.
• 19 - The unconscious is a fact, insofar as it is supported by the very discourse that establishes it.
• 20 - After all, it is not from the discourse of the unconscious that we glean the theory that explains it.

5 of Jacques Lacan's most famous phrases

We believe that you already know a lot about Lacanian theory from the phrases of Jacques Lacan that we brought here. To finish this text, we briefly commented on 5 of the most famous ones. Check them out!

21 - When the loved one goes too far in betraying himself and perseveres in deceiving himself, love stops following him.

As we have already mentioned, the desire to satisfy and be satisfied is very much connected to what Lacan thinks about love. It is important not to deceive oneself in this sense and to know how to identify what makes up the desire involved in each love.

22 - You only feel guilty if you give in to your desire.

It is interesting to investigate why giving in to desires brings guilt. For Lacan, it is a fact that this happens.

23 - All art is characterized by a certain mode of organization around a void.

For this reason, for Lacan it is important to use art as a form of analysis.

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24 - You can love someone not only for what he has, but literally for what he lacks.

Here we return to the discussion we had at the very beginning of the text. You love what you miss, and you submit to contributing to the other's lack.

25 - Can there be anything that justifies fidelity, other than the pledged word?

If love is an illusion, or rather, a contract that desires will be fulfilled, faithfulness is the guarantee that this contract will not be broken. For Lacanian theory, the word is the center of everything, including this faithfulness in a relationship based on love. Thus, faithfulness depends on the word.

Final considerations on Jacques Lacan's phrases

Our hope is that you have enjoyed and learned a lot from reading this text about the Lacan's phrases The psychoanalyst's theoretical proposal is extremely relevant, so it is worth investigating it further! If you are interested, you can do so by enrolling in our 100% online Clinical Psychoanalysis course. We have the theoretical background to speak not only of the Lacanian proposal, but of many others that are worth checking out.