ABSTRACT
In 1969, Jacques Lacan gave Jenny Aubry two handwritten notes in which he briefly articulated the place of the child’s symptom in relation to the parents. J. Lacan allusion to the plumber who might come and fix the leaking tap, or even unscrew and replace it, is a reference to little Hans. The symptom presents itself as something unassimilated or enigmatic that suggests to the individual that it has a cause. Jean Piaget’s insistence on supposed finality of language as a means of communication leads him to ignore the dimension of desire. The function of the tap as cause is precisely the concept of the tap that escapes Piaget’s operationalised understanding of the tap. The chapter examines the notion of the symptom through Piaget’s experiment, and Lacan’s reading of it, to propose the means by which the symptom is able to transmit something that goes beyond the objectivised experimental method.
