ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the logical puzzle of the prisoner's dilemma as analysed in Lacan's March 1945 article 'Logical time and the assertion of anticipated certainty'. Advocates of a non-pressurizing modality of psychoanalytic time often overlook, or underplay, an instance of unorthodox time management in Freud. The most difficult variation of the dilemma occurs when the prisoners before you are both wearing white disks. Once again, it becomes necessary to refer to the reasoning of others. For members of a given language community, accepted words have a conventionalized meaning that necessarily takes precedence over idiosyncratic personal significance. Kotso provides a valuable link, noting that the deferral apparent in inter-subjective processes works in parallel to the endless chain of signifiers whereby one signifier refers to another and so on. The anxious conditions of the competition mean that the reasoning process is rushed; the prisoner is forced to reach a conclusion at the fear of being left behind.
