The subject’s lack is the cynosure of the analytic process. The psychoanalytic discourse places the object a, the marker of lack, in the dominant position. The analyst embroiders the transferential relationship with the analysand by centralizing the constitutive lack of the object as a precondition for desire, which brings the subject to the locus of the Other. As well as lack, the specular image that takes over it and marks its boundaries, that is, the ego, is the other focal point of analysis. The image has its borders; this is the frame of the mirror. Around the limits of the image is where anxiety will make its appearance as what signals the momentary disruption of all points of identification. The limits of the mirror are symbolized by Lacan’s “little diamond” (<>), the sign which indicates the relation between the subject and the object in the matheme of fantasy ($<>a). This relation is mediated by desire. The role of the specular image, functioning as a sort of filter, is to protect the subject from anxiety by covering lack, but also marking it. The reflection in the mirror functions like a window frame that demarcates the illusory world of recognition (imaginary) from what Lacan calls “stage” (symbolic reality). In this stage, we find the desire of the masochist and the sadist. The extra-ordinary and the ordinary subject stage their desire in the same arena, playing the same part, with diametrically different techniques.
The scenarios of “perverse” desire do not just linger in a fantasmatic frame (as happens with neurosis); the extra-ordinary cross the window, taking fantasy on stage, that is, acting it out in the symbolic. The vacillation between desire and jouissance is absent from the extra-ordinary, because he is certain about what he wants. Contrary to the neurotic, whose desire always remains in doubt (this is the desire of the Other), the pervert does not have the doubt, but the knowledge of what he desires. The enduring question of “what the Other wants from me” is absent; the “pervert” takes the game in his hands, he knows and applies the rules. The desire of the “pervert” is to be passively enjoyed by the Other, as it is best manifested in masochism. Lacan notes that the masochist is supposed to know how to enjoy the Other. The masochist is the one who gives the orders, the commands, the knowledge, to the Other, who has to tackle its limits. The masochist is aiming at the jouissance of the Other . . . the final term he is aiming at is anxiety of the Other.
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