Abstract:
From Verneinung to the unary trait. This paper is based on Jacques Lacan's postulation of the subject as represented between signifiers. We start off with a study on identifications and examine texts from the psychoanalytic literature referring to the constitutive function of lack. This leads us to relate negation to the constitution of the subject. Lacan's Seminar IX, on identification (1961-62), then to Freud's article on Verneinung (1925). We then theorize that the notion of existence presupposes absence and is therefore connected to the notion of subject as -1 implicated in Lacan's formulation on the unary trait.
Keywords:
Psychoanalysis; Freud and Lacan; subject; negation; unary trait.