ABSTRACT
In this chapter Lacan takes up Freud's comments on the object/subject opposition typical of philosophical thought by referring to Freud's classical cases. Lacan theorized the object as the special libidinal "substance" in a person. Freud's phenomenological concept of the object gave rise to object-relations theories. Such object-relations theorists are far from reconceptualizing the object, as Lacan used the term as the phallus. Lacan viewed conflicts between self and other as emanating from a dialectical tension already at work in each person's own ego. The structure Freud unveiled in Beyond the Pleasure Principle is the lethal, non pleasurable side of keeping "reality" constant by repetitions that quickly become the habits that mark a person's ego with an unchangeable rigidity. The aim of Lacan is, of attaining jouissance as homeostasis, as Oneness. Lacan set up the base for later linking signifiers to the object a, as real sinthomes that join identifications to libidinal objects, while hiding within a mask of semblance.
