ABSTRACT
Lacan introduces and reintroduces the Symbolic Order in the Seminars to demonstrate its effects on the psyche. The symbolic has unquestionable claims for being that which defines 'humanity' since symbols are a human-specific co-creation. As the Symbolic Order, civilisation is a vast unconscious. The first wave of Lacan criticism accepted a partial identification between the Symbolic Order and Civilisation, or Oedipal culture. Readers considered Lacan's ability to synthesise the advances in the human, cultural, sciences with Freud's insights as his major contribution to psychoanalysis. Moreover, the unconscious in Freud appears to operate as having an explicitly illegitimate sexual content. The Symbolic Order is the realm of law. Desire as such is not recognised by the Law, which in effect renders it unconscious in the technical sense. Lacan, in his reading of Freud along culture-critical lines, saw in the absence of fixed categories a masking of the cultural drive.
