Seminar XX

Jacques Lacan's Seminars : I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX · X · XI · XII · XIII · XIV · XV · XVI · XVII · XVIII · XIX · XX · XXI · XXII · XXIII · XXIV · XXV · XXVI · XXVII I. Freud's technical writings II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis III. The Psychoses IV. The Object Relations V. The Formations of the Unconscious VI. Desire and its Interpretation VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis VIII. Transference IX. Identification The Names of the Father X. Anxiety XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis XII. Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis XIII. The Object of Psychoanalysis XIV. The Logic of Fantasy XV. The Psychoanalytic Act XVI. From One Other to the Other XVII. The Reverse of Psychoanalysis XVIII. On a Discourse That Would Not Be Semblance XIX. Or Worse XX. Encore XXV. The Moment of Concluding XXVII. Dissolution ← Seminar XIX Seminar XXI →

Encore
Seminar XX
Cover image associated with French editions of Seminar XX.
French Title	Le Séminaire, Livre XX : Encore
English Title	The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972–1973
Seminar Information
Seminar Date(s)	1972–1973 (academic year)
Session Count	10 sessions
Location	Paris (École Freudienne de Paris)
Psychoanalytic Content
Key Concepts	Jouissance • Phallic function • Feminine sexuality • Sexuation • There is no sexual relationship • Not-all (pas-tout) • Lalangue • Borromean knot
Notable Themes	Feminine sexuality; types of jouissance; logical formulas of sexuation; love and knowledge; mysticism and the Real; beginnings of topological formalization
Freud Texts	Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality • On Narcissism • Beyond the Pleasure Principle • A Child is Being Beaten
Theoretical Context
Period	Late/middle period (Real and topology)
Register	Real/Symbolic (jouissance, sexuation, topology)
Chronology
Preceded by	Seminar XIX
Followed by	Seminar XXI

Encore (Encore, literally “Again”) is the twentieth seminar of Jacques Lacan, delivered in Paris during the 1972–1973 academic year. Subtitled On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, Seminar XX is one of Lacan's most widely read and commented works. It consolidates his theory of jouissance, develops the logical formulas of sexuation, and famously reasserts the thesis that “there is no sexual relationship” (il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel).

Encore is especially notable for Lacan's distinction between phallic jouissance and a so-called Other jouissance (often associated with “feminine jouissance”), his elaboration of the category of the not-all (pas-tout) in relation to feminine sexuation, and his suggestive readings of mysticism—exemplified by Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa'—as touching a point of Real jouissance. The seminar also marks the transition to the topological phase of Lacan's teaching, culminating in his use of the Borromean knot in subsequent seminars.

Historical and institutional context

Post-1968 France and late Lacan

Seminar XX takes place in the wake of the events of May 1968 and the subsequent reconfiguration of French university and political life. Lacan had directly addressed student and intellectual audiences in L'envers de la psychanalyse (1969–1970), where he elaborated the four discourses and examined the relation between knowledge, power and jouissance.

By the time of Encore, Lacan's École Freudienne de Paris was firmly established as an alternative to institutional psychoanalysis recognized by the International Psychoanalytical Association. The seminar speaks both to an internal analytic audience and to broader philosophical and cultural debates around sexuality, sexual difference and the limits of scientific discourse about sex.

Composition and dates

The sessions of Seminar XX were given between November 1972 and mid-1973, often dated from 21 November 1972 (“About jouissance”) to 20 February 1973 (“God and the jouissance of The Woman”), followed by a small number of additional lessons. The seminar is comparatively brief (around ten sessions) but dense, each lesson focusing on a limited set of formal devices and key propositions.

The first session, “About jouissance,” sets out the fundamental opposition between function and jouissance, reinterpreting the superego and introducing the paradox that “jouissance is what is useless.” A central later session, “God and the jouissance of The Woman” (Dieu et la jouissance de La femme), addresses feminine jouissance and mystical experience, including the question “And why not interpret one face of the Other, the God face, as based on feminine jouissance?”

Publication history

Portions of Encore circulated early in French transcription. The definitive French text, established by Jacques-Alain Miller, was published by Éditions du Seuil in 1975 as Le Séminaire, Livre XX : Encore in the Champ freudien collection. The first authorized English translation by Bruce Fink appeared with W. W. Norton & Company in 1998 under the title The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972–1973 (Encore).

In the anglophone world, the translation quickly became a central reference for discussions of Lacan's theory of sexuality, jouissance and feminism, and has been the object of sustained commentary in texts such as Reading Seminar XX edited by Suzanne Barnard and Bruce Fink.

Conceptual framework and methodology

Jouissance as central category

Encore continues a trajectory already visible since D'un Autre à l'autre (1968–1969) and L'envers de la psychanalyse, in which jouissance—rather than desire or signifier alone—becomes the central category of Lacan's teaching. In Seminar XVI, Lacan had already spoken of jouissance “posited as an absolute”; in Encore he returns “again” (encore) to jouissance in its relation to law, sexuality, love and knowledge.

At the outset, Lacan offers a striking definition: “Jouissance is what is useless.” Jouissance is not mere pleasure under the pleasure principle, but a paradoxical satisfaction bound up with transgression, pain, and the drive beyond homeostasis. It has a juridical etymology—linked to usufruct, rights of enjoyment—which Lacan exploits to show how jouissance is always implicated in law and prohibition.

Language, logic and topology

Methodologically, Seminar XX combines:

• A **logical formalization** of sexuation using predicate logic and quantifiers (universal “all,” existential “there exists”), leading to the formulas of sexuation;
• A **linguistic and phonemic approach** to lalangue (Lacan's term for the jouissance-laden materiality of language beyond communication), including puns, homophonies and equivocations;
• The first appearances of the **Borromean knot** as a topological model binding the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real.

These elements are not presented as separate “levels” but as interdependent: logical formulas are used to express paradoxes of sexual positioning; topological figures aim to show how different modes of jouissance are knotted together; lalangue is treated as the medium through which love and jouissance are articulated and mis-articulated.

Key themes and concepts

Jouissance, superego and the body of the Other

Early in the seminar Lacan re-reads Freud's second topography in terms of jouissance and the superego. Whereas Freud links the superego to conscience and prohibition, Lacan emphasizes its obscene, imperative dimension: not “Thou shalt not,” but “Enjoy!” (Jouis!).

He proposes several provocative theses about the body and the Other:

• “The jouissance of the Other, of the Other's body that symbolizes it, is not a sign of love.”
• “Ultimately, one person's body is just a part of the Other's body.”
• “It is the Other who jouis (jouit).”

These formulations underscore that jouissance is not a transparent expression of love or reciprocity. The Other's body, and the subject's own body, are caught up in a circuit of use and enjoyment that may be indifferent or even hostile to love. Lacan adds: “There is a hole there and that hole is called the Other,” indicating that the Other is not a substantial entity but a structural void around which demand and enjoyment circulate.

Later he will radicalize this by declaring that “the Other does not exist” (l'Autre n'existe pas): what exists are only signifiers and the effects of jouissance they generate.

Phallic jouissance and its limits

A crucial distinction in Encore is between **phallic jouissance** and other possible modes of jouissance. Phallic jouissance is governed by the phallus as signifier and by castration; it is the paradigm of sexual enjoyment as limited, localized in the organ, and structured by the phallic function.

Lacan often associates phallic jouissance with what is usually called orgasm, detention and detumescence, the cycles of excitation and release, the whole field of sexual satisfaction, fetishism and perversion considered under the signifier of the phallus. Phallic jouissance is “countable” and “finite”; it is articulated within the Symbolic order by the phallic signifier, and subject to prohibition and castration.

Other (feminine) jouissance and the not-all

The innovation of Seminar XX lies in introducing a **supplementary jouissance** (jouissance supplémentaire), often called “Other jouissance” or “feminine jouissance.” Lacan maintains that psychoanalysis has been embarrassed by this possibility, revealing its own phallocentrism:

“If there were another jouissance than phallic jouissance, it could not fail to be that one.”

He then formulates the paradox: in fact, there is no other jouissance than phallic jouissance—except the one “of which woman says nothing,” the one about which “she does not breathe a word.” Psychoanalysis thus presupposes that woman (or, more precisely, the subject in a feminine position) is capable of an unverifiable jouissance, “Other” than phallic.

To formalize this, Lacan introduces the **formulas of sexuation** and the category of the not-all (pas-tout):

• On the “masculine” side, all speaking beings are submitted to the phallic function (∀x Φx), with an exception (∃x ¬Φx) that guarantees the universality.
• On the “feminine” side, no exception exists; instead, “not all” (¬∀x Φx) are subject to the phallic function, and “there exists an x such that x is not-all-Φ” (∃x ¬Φx in the sense of not-all).

Hence Lacan's enigmatic formula “The Woman does not exist” (La femme n'existe pas): there is no universal set “woman” under a single predicate; the feminine side is structured as not-all with respect to phallic jouissance. But this not-all is precisely what opens the possibility of another jouissance, “beyond” the phallus, which Lacan associates with mysticism and certain feminine experiences of rapture.

Lacan writes: “There is a jouissance that is hers (the woman), that belongs to that ‘she' that does not exist and does not signify anything.” He characterizes this jouissance as “of the order of the infinite.”

Mysticism, God and the jouissance of The Woman

One of the most discussed chapters of Encore is “God and the jouissance of The Woman” (20 February 1973). Lacan comments on the cover of the seminar, which shows Bernini's sculpture of Saint Teresa of Ávila in ecstasy, and asks whether mystical experiences can be read as testimonies of Other jouissance.

He suggests:

“Why not interpret one face of the Other, the God face, as supported by feminine jouissance?”

For Lacan, mystical writings by women (Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, etc.) attest to experiences of a jouissance that is not reducible to genital orgasm or phallic function. Yet he demystifies such states by remarking that, ultimately, reputed mystical delusions are “mere business of fucking” (simple affaire de jouir), that is, of jouissance.

Mysticism thus provides a privileged site for thinking the relation between the ineffable Real and the signifier: mystical texts strain language to bear witness to a jouissance that “cannot be said,” while nonetheless being inscribed in lalangue.

Love, sexuality and the non-existence of the sexual relationship

Seminar XX reformulates one of Lacan's best-known slogans: “There is no sexual relationship.” This does not mean there are no sexual acts or partnerships, but that there is no complementary signifier that would write a harmonious rapport between the sexes in the Symbolic. No formula can be written that would express, without remainder, a sexual proportion between man and woman as such.

The absence of a written sexual relation is “made up for” by love:

“What makes up for the sexual relationship is, quite precisely, love.”

Love addresses the Other as subject and attempts to write a relation where there is only non-rapport. Love says “You are my woman” or “You are my man,” trying to make the Other coincide with a signifier. Yet love itself is subject to misrecognition, imaginary capture, and the structures of narcissism that Freud had analyzed.

In this sense, Encore is a theory of jouissance in its complex relation with love: the earlier opposition in Lacan's work between desire and love's demand is reconfigured as an opposition between phallic jouissance (finite, counted) and supplementary jouissance (infinite, not-all), with love functioning as a fragile bridge over the impossibility of sexual rapport.

Lalangue and the speaking body

Lacan's reflections on lalangue (one word) intensify in Seminar XX. Lalangue refers to the opaque, jouissance-laden dimension of language—the equivocations, idioms, puns and sounds through which the body is affected, prior to communication and grammar.

In Encore, the body is conceived as a site of inscription for lalangue: the speaking being (parlêtre) enjoys words as much as uses them. Sexuality is thus inseparable from the jouissance of lalangue, and differences between masculine and feminine positions are tied to how each is inscribed in this enjoyment of language.

Topology and the Borromean knot

In the final sessions of Seminar XX, Lacan introduces, in outline, the Borromean knot, a topological figure composed of three linked rings such that if any one is cut, all three are separated. The rings stand for the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real.

This knot anticipates the topological period of Lacan's last eight years of teaching, during which he will systematically explore how symptoms, jouissance and the subject can be modeled as Borromean or non-Borromean linkages. In Encore, the knot appears as a way of thinking the consistency of the subject's different registers in relation to sexual difference and jouissance.

Theoretical significance and clinical implications

Reconfiguration of sexual difference

Seminar XX is often taken as Lacan's most systematic statement on sexual difference. It departs from biological or social definitions of “man” and “woman” and instead defines **masculine** and **feminine positions** structurally, via their relation to the phallic function and the not-all.

Key points include:

• Masculine sexuation is organized around universality and exception: the masculine subject is “wholly” under the phallic function but posits an exception (the “primal father” or similar figure) who escapes castration.
• Feminine sexuation is organized as not-all: there is no exception that would totalize, and the subject in a feminine position is not-all under the phallic function, opening onto an Other jouissance.

Clinically, this means that “feminine” does not coincide with biological women, nor masculine with biological men; subjects of any anatomical sex can occupy either side of the formulas, depending on their positioning relative to the phallic function and their mode of jouissance. This has made Encore a key text for later Lacanian gender theory and debates around transsexuality, queer theory, and nonbinary positions.

The clinic of jouissance

Encore contributes to a “clinic of jouissance”: instead of focusing primarily on meaning or interpretation of signifiers, the analyst attends to where and how the subject enjoys. Questions include:

• Is jouissance primarily phallic (localized, countable) or does it take the form of a more diffuse, sometimes mystical, not-all jouissance?
• How does the subject's symptom organize jouissance, and how is this entangled with their position on the side of the formulas of sexuation?
• How are love declarations (“I love you”) used to veil or negotiate jouissance?

The formulas of sexuation provide a grid for thinking neurosis, perversion and psychosis in relation to sexual positioning, without reducing clinical structures to gender stereotypes.

The analytic act and the limits of knowledge

The subtitle “On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge” points to a further theme: the limit of knowledge confronted by the analytic act. The Other jouissance associated with the feminine is precisely what cannot be fully known or symbolized; it touches the Real.

Encore thus emphasizes:

• The impossibility of a complete, scientific knowledge of sexuality;
• The fact that psychoanalytic knowledge (savoir) is itself partial, situated on one side of the formulas (mostly the phallic side);
• The ethical necessity for the analyst to respect the opaqueness of the subject's jouissance, rather than translating it entirely into meaning.

This has implications for the end of analysis: rather than full knowledge, what is at stake is the subject's assumption of their mode of jouissance and their position vis-à-vis the non-existence of the sexual relationship.

Reception and legacy

Within Lacanian psychoanalysis

Within Lacanian circles, Encore is a canonical seminar, often treated—together with Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis)—as one of Lacan's “major works.” It is central to training programmes, particularly for its elaboration of sexual difference, jouissance and the formulas of sexuation.

Clinicians have used Seminar XX to:

• Refine differential diagnosis by examining the subject's mode of jouissance;
• Rethink hysteria and obsession in relation to masculine/feminine positioning;
• Address questions of love, couple relations and sexual impasses in contemporary clinical practice.

Feminist and gender-theoretical receptions

The reception of Encore among feminist and gender theorists has been mixed and productive. Some writers (e.g. Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous) have criticized Lacan's insistence that “The Woman does not exist” as reinscribing phallocentrism, while others have seen in the notion of Other jouissance and the not-all a powerful way to think sexual difference beyond patriarchal universals.

Later theorists influenced by Lacan (including Slavoj Žižek, Judith Butler in certain readings, and various Lacanian feminist authors) have drawn on Encore to explore:

• The instability of gender identity;
• The role of fantasy and jouissance in gendered subjectivity;
• The critique of heteronormative assumptions in psychoanalytic and social discourse.

Influence in philosophy and cultural theory

Beyond clinical and feminist contexts, Seminar XX has been influential in philosophy and cultural theory. The logical and topological formalizations of sexuation have inspired work on:

• The structure of the subject in relation to the exception and the not-all (notably in Alain Badiou's reading of Lacan);
• The role of love as a procedure that attempts to inscribe a relation where none is given;
• The politics of enjoyment in late capitalism (via the link between jouissance and the superego imperative to enjoy).

Encore is frequently invoked in contemporary discussions of the limits of discourse, the relation between language and the body, and the ways in which sexuality both resists and demands representation.

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• Seminar XIX
• Seminar XXI
• Jouissance
• Phallic function
• Feminine sexuality
• Sexuation
• There is no sexual relationship
• Lalangue
• Borromean knot
• Superego
• Slips of the tongue
• Mysticism

Further reading

• Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre XX : Encore. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975.
• Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972–1973 (Encore). Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.
• Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge, 1996 (entries: “jouissance”, “sexuation”, “not-all”).

• Barnard, Suzanne; Fink, Bruce (eds.). Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
• Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 (esp. chapters on jouissance and sexual difference).

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English translation

An English translation of Seminar VIII was made by a reading group associated with Jacques Lacan in Ireland and Cormac Gallagher from unedited French manuscripts, and arranged in a presentable form by Tony Hughes.

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Author(s)	Title	Publisher	Year	Pages	Language	Size	Filetype	Downloads
Jacques Lacan, Jacques-Alain Miller, Bruce Fink	On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore 0393319164, 9780393319163, 0393045730, 9780393045734	W. W. Norton & Company	1999	160 [81]	English	2 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3,4, 5
Jacques Lacan, Jacques-Alain Miller, Bruce Fink	On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore 0393319164, 9780393319163, 0393045730, 9780393045734	W. W. Norton & Company	1999	159 [81]	English	3 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Related

Bruce Fink, Suzanne Barnard, Jacques Lacan	SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis & Culture Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality	State University of New York Press	2002	200 [199]	English	719 Kb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Bruce Fink, Suzanne Barnard, Jacques Lacan	SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis & Culture Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality	State University of New York Press	2002	192	English	17 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Bruce Fink, Suzanne Barnard, Jacques Lacan	SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis & Culture Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality	State University of New York Press	2002	192	English	17 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5

French (Text & Audio)

Date	Title	PDF	MP3
21 Novembre 1972	De la jouissance	pdf	mp3
12 décembre 1972	Complément Et début de la séance suivante: la bêtise Exposé de Recanati paru dans Scilicet n° 5 -Seuil	pdf	mp3
19 décembre 1972	A Jakobson	pdf	mp3
09 janvier 1973	La fonction de l'écrit	pdf	mp3
16 janvier 1973	L'amour et le signifiant	pdf	mp3
13 février 1973	Aristote et Freud: l'Autre satisfaction	pdf	mp3
20 février 1973	Dieu et la jouissance de la femme	pdf	mp3
13 mars 1973	Une lettre d'âmour	pdf	mp3
20 mars 1973	Le savoir et la vérité	pdf	mp3
10 avril 1973	Complément Début de la séance suivante: La position de linguiste Fin de la séance: Remerciement	pdf	mp3
08 mai 1973	Du baroque	pdf	mp3
15 mai 1973	Ronds de ficelle	pdf	mp3
26 juin 1973	Le rat dans le labyrinthe	pdf	pdf

• Download - Sources: critical version established by E.L.P., audio recordings of the sessions on the site of Patrick VALAS, a reading by Christian Fierens.
• Download - Source: http://ecole-lacanienne.net
• Download -- Transcription of the first seven sessions of this seminar, conducted from 1991 to 1998 by VRMNAGRLSOFAFBYPMB. The sources used were the notes of CC, DA, EP, the stenotype for the four first sessions, the Gabbay version and audio tape recordings.

Audio Recordings of Lacan's Seminars

1972.11.21 1972.12.12 1972.12.19 1973.01.09 1973.01.16 1973.02.13 1973.02.20 1973.03.13 1973.03.20 1973.04.10 1973.05.08 1973.05.15 1973.06.26

References

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