ABSTRACT
Jacques Lacan defines neurosis as a relationship to desire, as a particular way that the subject can find to “consist as a subject” in relation to desire. The paradigmatic modality of the subject’s relationship to desire is what is used by Lacan to identify the basic joint, the primary cutting off point or differentiation from which it is possible to then articulate the other distinctive characteristics of the obsessional structure. Lacan starts his dismembering of obsessional neurosis from the idea that what defines obsessional neurosis is a relationship to desire. On the one hand, “relationship to desire” refers to the subject’s confrontation with desire as a point of articulation or “joint” that has a constitutive function for the structure of obsessional neurosis, but that is not, as such, distinctive of obsessional neurosis. In general, it also seems important to mention how Leclaire’s specific case also clarifies and illustrates an essential point about Lacan’s structuralist approach.
