ABSTRACT
What is at stake in an analysis is not only to glimpse what had previously remained opaque for a subject, but also beyond that what the new method of linking could be. The linking at the end is logically correlative with the unlinking that manifested itself at the entry into analysis, produced by the heterogeneity that was brought to light and that jolted the subject out of his nonchalant attitude. Lacan starts with the idea that the whole can be held together by just the symbolic. But one aspect remains invariable: to relativise the impact of the symbolic, which is one of the axes of his final theoretical turning point, does not mean that he does without the Name-of-the-Father. The symptom as necessary demonstrates that what occupies the place of the function that holds the whole together must be joined to the real, namely the fourth element.
