ABSTRACT
The place of emotion in Lacan’s approach to psychoanalysis has not been sufficiently appreciated. His attention to theories of speech and language, to mathematical and topological models, and to a certain intellectual rigor in his formulations have contributed to the tendency to overlook the fact that throughout his seminars and papers there is a consistent concern with affect and its role in the psychic life of the divided subject. His early work on the mirror stage is, among other things, a reflection on the feeling of joy that accompanies the self-image of wholeness, the feelings of rage that accompany the first awareness of the other, and anguish in the encounter with lack. In the appreciation of these fundamental affects and their role in both early narcissism and object relations Lacan was close to Freud’s thought and was well aware of the elaboration of these processes by Melanie Klein and others. That he then sought to bring the affective dimension into his overall conceptual framework of psychoanalysis and to subject them to the rigor of his inquiry is consistent with Lacan’s general effort.
