Sinthome

The Sinthom or sinthome (Fr. ) is in the theory of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, that part of the symptom, which forms the core of the subject. In contrast to the symptom Sinthom is not a signifier; it does not refer to something else. It resists any interpretation and is not ultimately resolvable. It belongs to the region of the real, insofar as it represents the way in which the subject organizes its enjoyment.

Lacan introduces the concept of " Sinthoms " late (in the Seminar XXIII: Le sinthome of 1975-76 ), and even there he used to part nor the conventional notation " symptom " when he writes of the Sinthom. Lacan points out that " the symptom can only be defined as the way in which each subject the unconscious enjoys [ jouit ], insofar as it determines the unconscious " ( Lacan. Seminar XXIII, quoted n Evans: Dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis, p 274).

In Lacan's model of the Borromean rings of the real, imaginary and symbolic the Sinthom forms an additional fourth ring, which is formed by the " Reuleaux triangle" in the center of the three rings. The Sinthom is therefore the element which the node in the first place together. Unless it this way, the center of the subject is - "what is one allowed to live " (ibid.) - is according to Lacan, the task of psychoanalysis is not in the resolution of Sinthoms, but rather in the identification with him.

Slavoj Žižek's book entitled " Love your symptom as thyself " is an allusion to this necessary identification. Žižek writes: