ABSTRACT
In The Sinthome, the question bore explicitly on the effect of the artist's know-how in dealing with the symptom, in the fashion of James Joyce, whose work, employing equivocation that went far beyond meaning, modified the symptom. This chapter focuses on how differs from the classical S. Freudian conception of the symptom as compromise between irreconcilable tendencies that set up conflict. The Borromean conception no longer leads to consider the symptom as the effect of a conflict, but rather as the creation of a relation. The subversion of identification involved in the extension of the symptom is associated with this broadening out of the concept of repetition. More generally – and it is important to emphasise this – extension, along with the Lacanian notion of separation, are "relations". In the Borromean world, based on the non-relation between and among the registers R, S and I, the symptom is the fourth term which holds them together and introduces connections and relations.
