ABSTRACT
We now come to a crucially important crossroads at which the basic approach of the preceding chapters must be significantly complicated. The first imperative is to reconsider the dualistic character of our discussions, centered as they have been on the conceptual couplet of positionality and dispositional!ty. In many ways, of course, a dualistic approach was called for by the binary tendency of Freud's own theorizing. Yet it now remains to show how this dualism can be unfolded into the triadic conception implied by Lacan's imaginary, symbolic, and real. In much of what has been said up to this point, we have acted as if the imaginary and the symbolic could be understood in a dialectic of their own, independent of the real. To allow this idea to go unqualified, however, would lead to a complete misconception. The three categories must be rigorously integrated in a fashion that does justice to Lacan's comparison of the three registers to the interlocking rings of a Borromean knot. The ultimate objective is not simply to clarify Lacanian theory but rather to demonstrate how Lacan develops his theory in a genuine reading of Freud's text. The task will be to see how familiar Freudian dualisms require development into triadic structures as an unfolding of their own inner logic.
