Since the birth of psychoanalysis at the hands of Sigmund Freud, the psychodynamic current has evolved and varied, with the emergence of different schools and traditions that either totally separated themselves or followed in the wake of classical psychoanalysis but introduced novelties.

However, there was one author who believed that this evolution had led to a departure from the basic pillars of psychoanalysis and would propose a return to the origins, making a rereading of the Freudian work. It is about Jacques Lacan, one of the great exponents of psychoanalysis in France , a country that still preserves a great tradition in this current of the history of psychology.

In this article you can find a series of 85 sentences by Jacques Lacan in order to better understand his thinking.

85 sentences of Lacan to understand his legacy

Below we present a series of eighty-five iconic and representative phrases of Lacan’s thought, which may help to better understand his thinking.

1. Only idiots believe in the reality of the world, the real is unclean and must be endured

Lacan considered that the human being is not capable of identifying and expressing the reality of his psyche and the world, this being in fact what we do not know. We limit ourselves to acting through symbolism to try to reproduce part of the real and unconscious through the conscious. The truth is unbearable and incompatible with the self.

2. Truth is the error that escapes deception and is achieved through misunderstanding

This sentence lets us see the author’s perspective that reaching the truth is complex, being unconscious.

3. If Freud focused on sexuality, it is because in sexuality, the speaking being babbles

Lacan advocated a return to the Freudian. He considers that in the sexual field one can find elements that move away from the rational and from thought to focus on the unconscious, and can even reveal the truth. For him, and n sexuality can be found remnants of the unconscious .

4. Desire is always desire

Our drives and fantasies do not cease to be, but remain as such. If one seems to fulfill its objective, another appears to replace it.

5. Nothing satisfies the desire of the whole

Like the previous sentence, in this Lacan tells us that whatever we do to try to satisfy ourselves, our desires and drives will not cease to exist.

6. Truth can only be explained in terms of fiction

For Lacan, reality is everything that we do not know and that we would find impossible to recognize or express with language, our perception and expression being a fiction elaborated through symbolism.

7. The structure of the unconscious is similar to a language

For Lacan, language was an element of great importance when it came to understanding the psyche, being a symbolic element that allowed him to try to link the conscious and the unconscious.

8. You may know what he said, but never what the other person heard

We cannot know how the information we pass on to others will reach them or how it will be interpreted.

9. The desire takes place in that repercussion that arises from articulating language at the level of the other

The fact of connecting the language to the level of our interlocutor provokes in this certain attraction.

10. Can there be anything that justifies faithfulness, other than the word that is pledged? Yet the word committed is often committed lightly. If it were not pawned, it would probably be pawned much more rarely

The word given and the maintenance of it are difficult things to maintain in many occasions, often offering guarantees without them being really given.

11. To love is to give what you don’t have to someone who doesn’t

A phrase in which the author focuses on love as something in which we offer what we lack, knowing that one cannot complete the other completely, and that if we try to fill our gaps with someone that someone ceases to be a person and becomes an object. In spite of this, we will try to understand each other.

12. Love is always reciprocal

This phrase does not mean that whenever someone loves another person, they will love them too. With it the author tries to indicate that the person who loves another person finds something in them that makes them love them, so that the fact of loving them is partly because they have something that the person who loves them can perceive.

13. The sexual relation concludes with the real thing

In this phrase Lacan speaks to us of our pulsional and unconscious part, which is revealed in sexuality and relationships with others.

14. Fault generates desire

The absence or lack of something in ourselves is for Lacan what generates that we desire something or someone .

15. Only those who gave in to their desire feel guilty

For Lacan, guilt comes from not fulfilling or seeking a way to fulfill his desires and instincts, which provokes repentance.

16. When the loved one goes too far in betraying himself and persevering in self-deception, in love he no longer follows

In this sentence Lacan speaks to us about communication between unconscious people and the importance of remaining faithful to oneself.

17. It’s not you, it’s what in you makes up my desire

Lacan’s explanation for love and relationships. What attracts is not the person himself but what he provokes in himself.

18. Better to renounce those who cannot unite the subjectivity of their time to their horizon

This phrase indicates the relevance of taking into account the context and how the psyche is affected by the moment and the beliefs of the time in which we live.

19. We think we think with our brains, but personally I think with my feet. That’s the only way I can get in touch with something solid. Sometimes I think with my head as if I were thinking with something. But I’ve seen enough EEGs to know that there are no signs of thought in the brain

In this phrase Lacan encourages us to see the need to confront the world and live it instead of reasoning about it.

20. From a wound, what matters is the scar

The past has already happened, but the effects they have left on us will cause us to behave and think in a certain way.

21. When we are faced with something impossible, there is only one way: to do it. The impossible is to be done, not to be promised, of course it has a requirement: not to retreat before the impossible desire that inhabits us

Lacan tries to make us see how important it is not to repress our own desires and impulses in order to achieve what we want.

22. Using the symbolic is the only way the analytical process can penetrate the plane of identification

The symbolic is expressed through the word, language being the means by which the person registers from the conscious what he lives and what he feels. It is the only means by which it is possible to attempt to penetrate the patient’s psyche.

23. The analyst is not the one who knows, who knows is the analyzer

In the therapeutic relationship the one who has the true knowledge of the situation and in whom the conflicts to be treated occur is the patient, while the therapist only has fragmented knowledge according to what he relates.

24. The principle of pleasure lies in doing nothing, in doing as little as possible

For Lacan, pleasure is understood as the avoidance of suffering by reducing the level of tension and frustration while avoiding the reduction of the energy level.

25. It is common for the obvious to go unnoticed, precisely because it is obvious

The meaning of this phrase refers to the fact that we often ignore the real reasons for something simply because they are obvious and evident.

26. Only love can make pleasure condescend to desire

Jouissance is understood by Lacan as a result of the principle of death, which seeks an increase in activation that gives us pleasure even though under normal conditions such an increase would be aversive to us.

27. The structure of the unconscious is similar to a language

For Lacan, language, in spite of being a symbolic element, allows an approach to the unconscious precisely because it has a structure similar to it.

28. All we talk about is our own symptom

People speak from our inner world and express through language our perception of the world, our shortcomings and our difficulties.

29. Castration could be defined as the denial of such enjoyment in order to achieve progress on the reverse scale of the law of desire

The fear of castration is a widely known psychoanalytic concept . In this phrase Lacan identifies it as the mechanism with which we avoid expressing our drives (especially those linked to activation and the death drive).

30. The narrative, in fact, doubles its drama from the comments, without which no staging would be possible

The narrative, history and discourse of each person is seasoned by the contributions of others, which in turn give it content.

31. The symptom is a metaphor

For Lacan the metaphor is a form of defense mechanism that would be identified with condensation, in which a signifier is replaced by another with which it maintains a similar relationship. The symptoms of a disorder do the same by being a reaction that substitutes some element of the psyche to which it resembles in some way.

32. All art is characterized by a certain mode of organization around a void

Art and words are symbolic elements that try to organize chaos and truth even when it is unknown.

33. An analyst does not know what he is saying but he should know what he is doing

The role of the analyst for Lacan is to access the unconscious of the patient in order to bring it to light, through the word.

34. The first virtue of knowledge is the ability to face what is not obvious

While the obvious should not be ignored, knowing means facing the unknown in order to experience and gain information from it.

35. There is no subject if there is no significant melting

In this phrase Lacan refers to the Other, which configures the self.

36. If you have understood you are probably wrong

This phrase may refer to the impossibility of perceiving reality completely because the use of language implies the use of signs, which in turn exclude the opposite meanings.

37. The analyst simply returns to the analysand his or her inverted message, as if it were a mirror

The analyst works to extract and bring out to the consciousness the unconscious meaning of what the patient is proposing in his message.

38. Reality is the support for the neurotic’s ghost

Neuroses are generated mainly by the inadequate functioning of defense mechanisms and in the repression of instincts, being the unconscious reality what ends up producing the symptom

39. The woman does not exist

This strange phrase refers to the fact that for Lacan both men and women have a mental representation that is characterized as masculine, with the feminine being identified with the Other . It is not that women do not exist, but that for him they do not exist as a symbolic generality.

40. Art and speech commonly exist to hide fault

The symbolic is not capable of expressing the whole of reality, although it represents it in part

41. Every relationship is based on a certain relationship between two unconscious knowledges

The bonds we form are based on the relationships we establish at an unconscious level.

42. So irresistible is the attraction to usefulness that we can observe people willing to do anything for the pleasure of giving their comforts to those who have the idea that they will not be able to live without its help

Lacan links generosity and altruism with the need to be useful.

43. As intimacy becomes unbearable, there is then extimacy

Intimacy, the real, is unbearable for one’s self according to Lacan. We only recognize what is outside.

44. You can consider yourselves Lacanians if you like. For my part, I declare myself a Freudian

Lacan stands out for declaring himself a Freudian, even though some of the aspects he worked on were interpreted in a somewhat different way.

45. The real is what resists being symbolized in an absolute way

This sentence summarizes Lacan’s concept of real.

46. It is true only to the extent that we follow it

What we believe to be true is what will make you act. When we stop following it, it’s no longer true.

47. Since Freud the center of man is no longer what we thought it was. Now we have to get out of there

The vision of psychoanalysis meant a new way of seeing the human being, emerging notions such as the fundamental unconscious for Lacan. This vision allows to change the focus of attention towards the pulsional aspects and to leave behind other conceptions.

48. Below the signifier there is nothing

The relationship between meaning and signifier is an important element in the Lacanian vision.

49. If there is an object of your desire, it is none other than yourself.

For Lacan, desire is the search for something that we lack and that we wish to fill, with what we really want is to make up for that lack.

50. Love is basically wanting to be loved

This phrase states that in love there is always the desire to be reciprocated, which for Lacan is the nucleus of love.

51. Dialogue in itself is a rejection of aggression

The word is seen as a mechanism to sublimate aggressive impulses.

52. Subject is subject to desire

For Lacan, the human being is always in conflict with his desires.

53. The word is the death of the thing

As a representation of the symbolic, the word implies partial reality, while not allowing the full expression of the instinctive.

54. The unwary err

The unwary usually act on the basis of reason and logic, elements that are limited to the symbolic and ignore the unconscious.

55. Dreams are painted like puzzles

The dream is for Lacan the imaginary , which allows the expression of part of the real in the symbolic.

56. A subject is a signifier for another signifier

People are for other people not only elements with meaning but they are part of the structuring of reality when it comes to giving meaning to things through words.

57. You can love someone not only for what they have, but literally for what they lack

This phrase refers to the fact that love does not have to be given only in the presence of something that attracts us, but that it can also be loved by the absence of something that harms us.

58. We are beings with the capacity to desire but always incomplete, from there arises our journey

The fact that we are incomplete and wish to complete ourselves is what moves us.

59. Psychoanalysis is an extremely efficient instrument, and because it is gaining more prestige every day, it is in danger of being used for a different purpose for which it was created, and in this way we can degrade it

In this phrase Lacan reflects his belief that distorting the basic pillars of psychoanalysis can lead to the degradation of the psychoanalytic paradigm.

60. To be a psychoanalyst is simply to open one’s eyes to the evidence that nothing is more absurd than human reality.

In this sentence Lacan reflects his opinion that the human psyche is something complex and difficult to understand.

61. Leaving aside possible reservations, a fictitious story has even the advantage of revealing a symbolic need in a purer form insofar as we can pass it off as arbitrary.

Fiction incorporates a certain element of imagination, which in turn is a reflection of the unconscious . In this way, a fictional narrative can reflect a real need or drive in the patient.

62. What does it matter how many lovers you can have if none of them can give you the universe?

No matter who we are with, we are all incomplete beings who cannot be completed by anyone else.

63. The reason why we go after poetry is not that search for philosophy, but rather the dismantling of philosophy.

Poetry is a symbolic element that can claim to represent a person’s interior, his or her impulses and passions. In this way, Lacan considers that he dismantles philosophy insofar as it tries to offer an explanation to the world, in a way that is closer to the conscious.

64. Sexual relationship does not exist

With this phrase Lacan indicates that he considers that there is no true understanding of the sexual act.

65. The subject does not speak but is spoken

The self is a part of the psyche that is spoken by the unconscious, not the other way around.

66. The symptoms that you think you know about other people may seem irrational to you, but that is because you take them in isolation and want to interpret them directly.

The symptoms being analysed may seem strange from the outside, but they are understandable if the person is understood holistically . We cannot understand the suffering of others if we try to separate the symptoms from the rest of the context around them.

67. Life goes along the river touching the shore from time to time, stopping here and there without understanding anything. The principle of analysis is that no one understands anything that happens. The idea of the unity of human life has always produced in me the effect of a scandalous lie

A reflection on life, indicating the lack of understanding of most of what we are going to live.

68. I think where I am not, then I am where I do not think

Again, the confrontation between the conscious and the unconscious, the latter being for Lacan what he makes us to be.

69. Psychoanalysis is not, on the one hand, a faith, but on the other hand I don’t like to call it a science either. Let’s say it’s a practice and that it works on what’s not right.

Lacan expresses his conception of what psychoanalysis entails.

70. If at some point psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it does not do so in terms of the very reality of these acts, nor in their character of biological experience

Sexuality is a subject often worked on and a core part of psychoanalysis, especially Freudian. However, the point of view offered by this paradigm does not refer to the act itself, but to its symbolic elements and its development.

I love you, but, inexplicably and because I love something more than you, I mutilate you

This phrase refers to the link between people and the relationship between what a person is and what we want him to be, between what he is and what we would like him to complete.

72. Truth has the structure of fiction

Since fiction is imagination and is partially linked to reality, the structure of both has similarities.

73. The desire of man is the desire of the Other

In this sentence Lacan speaks of one of his own concepts, that of the Other as the conception of the external and the vertebral axis of the structure of the self .

74. The secret by which the truth has always initiated her lovers, and by which they have accessed her paths, is that it is in the hidden that she delivers the greatest amount of truth

For Lacan the truth is in the hidden, in the imperceptible, in the unconscious.

75. When in love I ask you for a glance, that act has as its condemnation will be unsatisfactory in any way. Because you will never observe me from where I see you

Each person has his or her own way of understanding the world, so it is difficult to find an identical conception between both people, even in love.

76. When you really love each other, it has nothing to do with sex

Love and sex don’t have to be linked for Lacan.

77. Anxiety as we know it always has a connection to a loss. With a relationship that has two sides and can vanish simply by being replaced by something else. Something that no patient can face without feeling a sense of dizziness

In these phrases Lacan relates anxiety to the fear of loss.

78. Life has only one meaning, to be able to gamble, and to gamble one’s life has some stake

This sentence speaks of daring to live in spite of the risks .

79. “Saying” has something to do with time. The absence of time is something that is dreamed is what is called eternity, and that dream consists of imagining that one wakes up

A reflection on what it means to dream. We are being told about the conscious and symbolic (saying) and the unconscious (dreaming).

80. The unconscious, is very precisely the hypothesis that one does not dream only when one sleeps

In this phrase Lacan indicates that dreaming, wishing, is something we do continuously and that governs us from the unconscious.

81. However, analytical truth is not so mysterious, or so secret, that it prevents us from recognizing the people who can direct their consciences to see the truth spring up spontaneously

Although the analysis of the psyche is complex and complicated, it is something that is possible to achieve.

82. The unconscious, it is said, does not know the contradiction; this is surely why it is necessary for the analyst to operate for something that does not make its foundation on the contradiction

The analyst must work on the patient in a way that does not contradict the unconscious drives of the subject, since the unconscious is not contradictory.

83. It is not necessary to wait for Freud to access the knowledge that there is a part of our psychic functions that are beyond our conscious reach

Lacan indicates that the fact that there is something unconscious in us can or should be easily perceived due to different aspects such as instincts or intuition .

84. It is the duty of the analyst to take the place of the dead man

This phrase indicates that the person who analyses the patient must locate the reason or origin of the suffering. Likewise, the role of the analyst is to help the patient to express himself, without guiding him.

85. What could be more convincing, however, than the gesture of laying one’s cards face up on the table?

This phrase speaks to us of the capacity for persuasion in the search for truth.