ABSTRACT
This paper was first presented in German at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and was first published in Ecrits (1966). Here, building directly on Freud, Lacan gives his clearest description of how the penis within the realm of what is normally called sexuality is transformed into the phallus, the first signifier in the Symbolic order which subsequently determines human subjectivity or consciousness. Lacan also introduces his key concepts of the realm of Demand and the realm of Desire which coincide with those of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Lacan’s work has been of particular interest to French feminist writers such as Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray.
