Lacan's entire eighth seminar is dedicated to the exploration of the concept of transference. Transference is a concept that Lacan has included in the »four fundamental concepts« of psychoanalysis (the unconscious, repetition, drive, transference). In my diploma I will try to establish why transference has such an important place in psychoanalysis. In order for the paper to be successful, I will not be satisfied with the description of the dynamics of transference, but I will search for its source. According to Lacan, it can be located in the relationship between the subject and the other. It begins with the child’s first cry, with which the child’s need – expressed through demand – is addressed to the other. This other is the other who uses language and is a desiring being. Through the respond to the demand, desire is introduced into the relationship. For the subject, the desire of the other is an enigma that causes his disappearance. In this place, the subject gets castrated, which leads to the emergence of the symbolic order. The desire is moved to the symbolic order and its character gets the structure of the metonymic sliding. Thus the other is always already the (symbolic) Other. Everything that the subject says is addressed to him. That is the reason that in Lacan's teachings, desire has the role of the lack in the Other, which also means the lack in the discourse of the Other. In it lies the reason that the subject is unconscious. This is the place of the emergence of transference as the analysand's love for the analyst. The purpose of the analysis is hidden here: to confront the subject of the unconscious with the desire of the Other as lacking. In the conclusion of my research, I will try to demonstrate why the lack in the relationship with the Other, as a consequence of the desire, gets filled up with love and sexuality, and why we cannot love the other as a subject. The answer to both questions hides in the concept of the unconscious as the place of non-sense. The task of the analyst as the Other is to confront the analysand with the original lack, which he was faced with when he was confronted with the symbolic order. Only in this way is the subject supposedly enabled to love »outside the bounds of the law«.
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