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The "[[other]]" is perhaps the most complex term in [[Lacan]]'s work.
==Jacques Lacan seems ==When [[Lacan]] first begins to have borrowed use the term from Hegel, in the 1930s, it is not very salient, and refers simply to "other people."
===Little Other versus the Big Other===In 1955, [[Lacan]] draws a distinction between the '"[[little other]]' " and the '"[[big Other]]' " ('"the [[Other]]'"), a distinction which remains central throughout the rest of his work.<ref>{{S2}} Chapter 19</ref>
[[Lacan]] asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to [[analytic treatment|analytic practice]]: the [[analyst ]] must be '"thoroughly imbued' " with the difference between '''A ''' and <i>'''a'''</i>,<ref>{{E}} p.140</ref> so that he can situate himself in the place of [[Other]], and not of the [[other]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.454</ref>
===The little other===
===The [[big Other]] designates radical [[alterity]], an [[otherness]] which transcends the [[illusory]] otherness of the [[imaginary]] because it cannot be assimilated through [[identification]].===
The [[Lacanbig Other]] designates radical [[alterity]], an [[otherness]] equates which transcends the [[big Otherillusory]] with [[languageother|otherness]] and of the [[lawimaginary]] because it cannot be assimilated through [[identification]].
Indeed, the [[big Other]] ''is'' the [[symbolic]] insofar as it is particularized for each [[subject]].
Thus, the [[Other]] is both an[[other]] [[subject]] in its radical [[alterity]] and unassimilable uniqueness and also the [[symbolic]] [[order]] which mediates the relationship with that [[subject]].
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However, the meaning of "the [[Other]] as an[[other]] [[subject]]" is strictly secondary to the meaning of "the [[Other]] as [[symbolic]] [[order]]."
==The Unconscious is the Discourse of the Other==
In conceiving of the [[Other]] as a [[place]], [[Lacan]] alludes to [[Freud]]'s concept of [[psychical locality]], in which the [[unconscious]] is described as "the [[other]] [[scene]]."
==Lack in the Other==
It is the [[mother]] who first occupies the [[position]] of the [[big Other]] for the [[child]], because it is she who receives the [[child]]'s primitive cries and [[retroactively]] sanctions them as a particular [[message]]. The [[Castration Complexcastration complex]] is formed when the [[child]] discovers that this [[Other]] is not [[complete]], that there is a [[lack]] in the [[Other]].
In other words, there is always a [[signifier]] missing from the treasury of [[signifier]]s constituted by the [[Other]].
The [[mythical]] complete [[Other]] (written '''A''' in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]]) does not [[exist]].
In 1957 [[Lacan]] illustrates this incomplete [[Other]] graphically by striking a [[bar]] through the [[symbol]] '''<strike>A</strike>'''.
Hence another name for the [[castrated]], incomplete [[Other]] is the ''[[barred]] [[Other]]''.
===The Other Sex===The Other is also '"the Other sex' (."<ref>{{S20, }} p.40). </ref>
The [[Other]] [[sex]] is always [[Womanwoman]], for both [[male]] and [[female]] [[subjects]].
<blockquote>"[[Man]] here acts as the relay whereby the [[Woman]] becomes this Other for herself as she is this [[Other]] for him."<ref>{{Ec}} p.732</ref></blockquote>
==See Also==