ABSTRACT
A first shift is initiated at the end of the first trimester of 1959. It consists in a tightening of the argumentation developed by Lacan in “The signification of the phallus”. The clearest formulations about intersubjectivity emerge at that point in the seminar when Lacan is in the process of setting the stage for that “little narrative”. Thus Lacan ends up speaking of “what happens at the level of the mirror stage, namely the inscription, the situation where the subject can put his own tension, his own erection in relation to the image beyond himself that he has in the Other”. Lacan is aware of the problem and launches, in the lessons of November and December 1961, into a clear distinction between sign and signifier that could make a case for the subject he is promoting. Lacan went as far as he could in his approach of the term “subject”, but the term signifier remains quite opaque.
