The social tie for Lacan.

What conception does psychoanalysis present of man's 'socialness'? It is certainly a vast subject, and one that can't be covered in a few pages. We will only examine one point, which is found in the relationship of the individual to society. We will show how Lacan tried to get away from this polar opposition, which was imaginary and already formed, between the individual and the social, starting from the statement, "the collective is nothing but the subject of the individual." This does not mean that the collective should be taken as a whole, and analyzed in the same way as an individual. The proposition says, of the subject (that is, of the subject of the unconscious), happening in a collective dynamic of individuals, resulting in a punctual and disappearing consequence of this dynamic. The introduction of a third term, 'the subject', distinct from the I (formed in the imagination), allows the introduction of a compound dimension in the individual/collective binary system. For that, the temporal determination of the subject's constitution has to be taken into account, On these bases, Lacan proposed some original community plans, the cartel and the pass. In generalizing the idea of the social tie with the writing of spoken words, he proposes to find one's way according to the structure of desire and not only, as with Freud, according to identification, which binds together the crowd. (C) 2001 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.