ABSTRACT
The distinction between jouissance and desire is first developed in the seminar on the formations of the unconscious, in the sessions of March 1958. From Kantian ethics to mystical experience, from frigidity to racism: judging by the range of the contexts in which it appears, the concept of jouissance is certainly versatile. During the course of Jacques Lacan's teaching, jouissance is used in a series of different contexts, in each of which it acquires a different nuance. Lacan seems to have imported the term into psychoanalysis from a certain tradition in philosophy, namely the Hegelian tradition as it was developed by Alexandre Kojeve, whose lectures on Hegel Lacan attended in the 1930's. Even much later in Lacan's work, when jouissance has taken on multiple significations far removed from the simple equation with the orgasm, this register is never completely abandoned.
