Lacan's "Borromean Knot": Understanding the Human Psyche

Introduction

The human psyche is a complex instrument, and our actions and thoughts are driven by a variety of different sources, including social mores and our individual selves. [1] Hence, there is a need to find an exhaustive system that will allow for a simple yet complete understanding of the human psyche. If this is achieved, we will not only have a better understanding of ourselves, but also of how the world around us functions.

This system is the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan (who is often nicknamed “the French Freud”). [2] Much of Lacan’s ideas can be linked together in a diagram known as the “Borromean Knot”, which borrows from a topological structure in mathematics that one can see below:

                   Figure 1

Lacan was famous for his idea that topology was not just a metaphorical way of showing the structure of things, but that it was the structure itself. [3] The Borromean Knot shows three circles that are all interconnected, and he adapted it to create his map of human subjectivity:

                                  Figure 2 

The map shows that the human psyche is composed of three orders: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. These three orders are all equally important and they are all co-dependent on one another,  therefore if one is missing, this would result in the entire Borromean Knot failing.

The Imaginary 

The first order of the Borromean Knot is the Imaginary. The Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek defined the Imaginary as “our direct lived experience of reality, but also of our dreams and nightmares - it is the domain of appearing, of how things appear to us.” [4] Hence, the Imaginary is all to do with interpreting and imagining a world around us, deception, narcissism, and the dichotomy between fantasy and reality. 

The origin of the Imaginary lies in another one of Lacan’s famous concepts - the mirror stage. The mirror stage is when an infant sees themselves in a mirror for the first time (which can be both literal or metaphorical). Being able to observe all their internal feelings of incompleteness and anxiety collected in the stable form of their appearance in the mirror, as well as having total control over what the reflection does creates the idea of an “Ideal Ego”. The “Ideal Ego” is what the infant believes their specular image in the mirror to be - a perfect version of themselves - so the infant strives to be like their notion of the “Ideal Ego”. By interpreting their reflection as someone other than themselves, the infant gains a better understanding of who they are, based on who they would view themselves to be if they were another person. Soon, however, the infant identifies themselves with their specular image, and what this means is that the infant realises that the reflection is a representation of themselves, which allows for the Imaginary (the realm of representations and appearances) to be possible in the infant and also the “ego” or identity of the infant to become actualised (as the infant can only know of themself by recognising their specular image). [5]

Lacan also thought that the Imaginary Order was the part of the human being that is closest to animal psychology, as animals live only in the Imaginary (concerned with luring other organisms into traps, as well as quickly perceiving and understanding the natural environment around them, which involves the knowledge of what different sounds and scents mean). However, the human Imaginary still differs from the animal Imaginary, which is evident in how humans are made to experience the Imaginary in a certain way, whereas animals experience the Imaginary in a way that is arbitrary. Thus, Lacan wrote, “In man, the Imaginary relation has deviated from the realm of nature.” [6] 

The Symbolic 

The “certain way” by which humans experience the Imaginary is another order of the Borromean Knot - the Symbolic. These are the rules, ideologies, and principles which govern the way we see and interpret the world around us. Lacan’s notion of the Symbolic derived mainly from the anthropology of Claude Leví-Strauss, which suggests that any culture around the world is just a set of “symbolic structures”, including the laws and standards controlling the arts, language, and customs (such as the exchange of gifts). Leví-Strauss then added to this idea and showed that the very nature of an individual’s conscious experience of the world around them is regulated and limited by these symbolic structures. [7]  

Lacan’s Symbolic is similar to this, but one key difference is that these symbolic structures can transcend the cultures themselves, and the relationship between individuals and the symbolic structures is what Lacan calls the “big Other” (which is analogous to the idea of reflection in the mirror stage from earlier). [8] 

The Real 

The final order of the Borromean Knot is the Real, which is perhaps one of the most difficult Lacanian concepts to grasp. This is mainly because Lacan’s own definition of the Real has changed numerous times over the years, and in some of these definitions, the Real does not even exist, yet is, in a paradoxical way, still impactful on our lives. One of the generally-accepted definitions of the Real is “what resists symbolization absolutely.”[9] In other words, it is the remainder when something is signified or represented (which is composed of the Imaginary as the form it is done and understood in and the Symbolic as the way in which it is done). For example, let’s say that someone stubs their toe, and they utter “ouch!” as the Imaginary representation of the pain, and with Symbolic structures (possibly a social custom) making the person believe in the necessity of uttering “ouch!”. Lacan would argue that the pain can never be fully represented with the linguistic expression “ouch!”, because if it could, then the expression of the pain and the pain itself would be identical. Yet this results in a contradiction because an expression presupposes the existence of the thing being expressed, and something cannot have its existence presupposed in its very concept. Therefore, there is something “left over” from the expression - another part of the “pain” which is not fully contained within language - the Real. 

From this, one can understand that the Real is unknown (because we don’t know what we don’t know), and the definition of the Real implies that it must be beyond human understanding entirely. This is why Lacan suggested that we can never have knowledge of the Real directly, and we can only know of the “traces” it leaves behind. These “traces” are just how it structures the other two orders, as linking to our example, what language can express can be defined through what language cannot express, and the two are closely-related to each other. [10] 

Desire and Jouissance

While the three orders of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real are the different dimensions of the human experience, when the orders converge and intersect with one another, four other psychoanalytic concepts are derived:

                 Figure 3

The meeting of the Imaginary and the Symbolic creates meaning, and is where we understand the world around us. The Imaginary by itself is nothing but the appearances of objects in the world, and only with the Symbolic can we be given a framework to understand what those appearances mean. 

Jouissance is a French word which translates to  “enjoyment”. Lacan thought that an individual is plagued with the anxiety that their jouissance is never enough, and that individuals will always desire more and more of what they already have. This jouissance which fails us and only makes us more dissatisfied with our current condition is sometimes referred to as the “jouissance of death”, and is marked as Jφ in the intersection between the Real and the Symbolic - because the rules and laws of the Symbolic make us feel limited in our jouissance (which is part of the Real, as Lacan thought an “unlimited jouissance”, or a jouissance prior to the Symbolic, was impossible, so it would only be possible in the Real). [11] Jouissance of death links to the Freudian idea of the “death drive”, suggesting that individuals are driven towards death and destructive behaviour towards themselves and others. This is mainly due to the fact that our feelings of dissatisfaction and insufficiency with our jouissance (the jouissance of death) are created through our own experience with the “big Other”. [12] 

Contrasting with the jouissance of death is what Lacan calls the jouissance of life (or jouissance of the Other). This is symbolised with JA in the intersection between the Real and the Imaginary in the Borromean Knot, because instead of limiting one’s jouissance to satisfy Symbolic structures, it is limited to satisfy the “Other” (which can refer to other people or an individual’s imagination of what other people want from them). This limiting of jouissance is typically done in the most mangling and destructive ways possible, like metaphorically amputating a limb from a body in hopes of fulfilling an Imaginary idea of the jouissance of life. [13] 

In between all these, and as the intersection of all three orders, is the “objet petit a” or “object-cause of desire”, which is represented by a in the Borromean Knot, and refers to all desire in general. Objet petit a can be considered a “lost jouissance”, which is a jouissance limited neither by the Symbolic nor by the Other. Lacan argued that this type of jouissance cannot really exist, because he thought that our enjoyment of things around us was only possible if limits were placed on the enjoyment. This is evident if you consider the opposite - that an infinite, unrestrained enjoyment of something existed. If you could have an unlimited enjoyment of something, then the enjoyment of that thing would no longer have any value (since you can have as much of it as you want). Hence, he also calls this the “object-cause of desire” because he thought all desire is essentially the desire of this “lost jouissance” or objet petit a, so it is also the cause and beginning of all our desires. Because of how objet petit a is the root of desire yet it does not exist, this means that we can never attain what we think we desire, yet we still experience jouissance (which is only possible after some desire is actualised and more of it is wanted), implying that as humans, we can never know what we really desire.

Since we can never know what we really desire, and our objet petit a can never be attained, the act of desiring never ends, and so, part of the human condition is being cursed with the fact that “the only end of desire is more desire,” thus we can never fully be fulfilled. [14] 

Conclusion

In summary, the human psyche can be reduced to the interplay between the three orders of the Borromean Knot. These orders are the Imaginary (the world of fantasies and appearances), the Symbolic (the rules and social structures being followed to make an individual’s Imaginary possible), and the Real (which is anything that cannot be categorised, and is simply the residue that remains after the symbolisation of something). When these orders intersect, we are met with the creation of meaning, two types of jouissance or enjoyment (which are limited by the Symbolic and the Imaginary respectively), as well as the objet petit a, which is the unattainable object of desire that causes desire. 

Therefore, by using the Borromean Knot, we can understand how the human mind experiences the world around it, and how every part of reality (stretching from the uncharted corners of the Real to the way societies and languages function in the Symbolic) is linked together. 

Bibliography

[1] Doohan, David, et al. Lacanian Works, lacanianworks.net/1974/11/seminar-xxii-r-s-i-1974-1975/.

Vintage, 1998.

[2] Fierens, Christian. Lecture De L'étourdit: Lacan 1972. L'Harmattan, 2012.

[3] Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. International Psycho-Analytical Press, 1922.

[4] Johnston, Adrian. “Jacques Lacan.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 10 July 2018, plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/.

[5] Lacan, Jacques. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: 1954-1955. Norton, 2010.

[6] Lacan, Jacques, and Jacques Alain Miller. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Vintage, 1998.

[7] Lacan, Jacques. On the Names-of-the-Father. Polity Press, 2015.

[8] Lacan, Jacques, and Jacques-Alain Miller. Anxiety. Polity, 2014.

[9] Lacan, Jacques, and Jacques Alain Miller. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. 

[10] Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. University of Chicago Press, 1983.

[11] McGowan, Todd. The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. State University of New York Press, 2004.

[12] No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis. “Symbolic - No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis - Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis.” No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis, No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis, 21 May 2019, nosubject.com/Symbolic#cite_note-2.

[13] Rabaté, Jean-Michel. The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

[14] “Yes, the Human Brain Is the Most Complex Thing in the Universe.” Mind Matters, 19 Mar. 2022, mindmatters.ai/2022/03/yes-the-human-brain-is-the-most-complex-thing-in-the-universe/.

[15] Žižek, Slavoj. Event: a Philosophical Journey through a Concept. Melville House, 2014.