Anguish reconsidered from the other side

In each of Lacan's seminars, one finds several striking, key formulations that become classic statements and the anchoring point of various later elaborations. The anguish seminar includes many such formulations. The first that I would highlight is the following: anguish is the affect that “does not lie” or “does not deceive” (ne trompe pas). ¹ This assertion stands out against the backdrop of Freud's view that affect lies regarding its cause as soon as it undergoes displacement. Lacan's formulation thus makes anguish into what, in the Introduction, I called “an exceptional affect.”