ABSTRACT
An analysand, a young woman, began a session by speaking of the departure of a housemate. This chapter presents with a difficulty in undoing the ties of love, a difficulty that manifests as hate. It attempts to take this further in order to see where it might lead and examines what might be done with this hate. Lacan places his emphasis on discord, on the lack of a sexual relation, in reference to truth. The discord refers to the principle of hate or strife as articulated by Empedocles, but also to the fundamental division indicated by the love/hate dichotomy. Lacan's, and Freud's, reference to the pre-Socratics, is necessary to overcome the bias in Western thought that was later introduced in the form of the Platonic Idea, as a type of apparent reconciliation of the radical divisions that the pre-Socratics were able to articulate.
