Changes

[[Lacan ]] (used to sparring match between [[Socrates ]] and [[Alcibiades ]] at the end of the ''[[Symposium]]'' to delineate the function of the ''[[agalma]]'' within the [[transference]].<ref>1960-1. p.163-195</ref>

''[[Agalma]]'' is the term Alcibiades used to grasp the hidden, yet fascinating [[object ]] he believed to be enclosed in the depths of Socrates’ hideous [[body]].

A mysterious gem whose preciousness he had savoured as a young man during a privileged [[moment ]] of revelation, the ''[[agalma]]'' had sparked Alcibiades’ infatuation with Socrates and served to justify his eulogy of Socrates’ attractiveness.

In [[Seminar ]] VIII Lacan surmised that the part played by the agalma in the emergence of transference must be at least as important as that of the supposed [[knowledge]], yet his subsequent invocations of the topic were rather disappointing.

Apart from a small, yet valuable gloss in his ‘Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the [[Psychoanalyst ]] of the School’ (1995b [1967]:7), references were often limited to simple mentions of the term.

It is tempting to argue that Lacan gradually replaced the agalma with his own [[concept ]] of the [[object a]], so that each passage on the function of the [[Object A|object a ]] in [[The Transference|the transference ]] would contain an implicit reference to the agalma.

the equation of the agalma and the object a makes it extremely difficult to comprehend some of Lacan’s later statements on the [[position ]] of the [[analyst ]] in the [[treatment]].

For if agalma (as the mysterious object triggering [[love]]) equals the object a and the analyst is held to occupy the position of object a in the [[analytic ]] [[discourse]], how can the transference ever be analysed?

The conflation of the agalma and the object a also gives rise to a confusion of love and [[desire ]] in Lacan’s [[work]], since the object a is traditionally defined as the object [[cause ]] of desire.

Lacan himself to some degree contributed to this confusion by using love and desire as interchangeable [[terms ]] in [[Seminar VIII]], and by elucidating the [[metaphor ]] of love in his two subsequent [[Seminars ]] as a [[substitution ]] of the [[desiring ]] (le désirant) for the desirable (le désiré).

However, from the mid-1960s he charted love and desire as two [[separate ]] experiences on whose [[distinction ]] the entire [[progress ]] of [[psychoanalytic ]] treatment depends.

The promotion of desire as the analyst’s lever to overturn the analysand’s love in [[Seminar XI]]

Hence the agalma of love does not equal the object a of [[desire, ]] because like the supposed [[subject ]] of [[knowing ]] the agalma relates to the analysand’s [[perception ]] of the [[Other ]] as a perfect [[being]], containing the precious jewels of [[happiness ]] and salvation, whereas the object a is strictly situated within the [[dimension ]] of [[semblance]].

Whereas the agalma represents the [[ideal ]] stone of wisdom, the object a is but a [[partial]], replaceable [[commodity]].

This conjures up the analyst's relation to the [[partial object ]] -- [[identified ]] as '[[petit a]],' or agalma in reference to [[the Symposium ]] -- which, in turn, leads to his/her stance vis-a-vis the [[drive]].

* Le Séminaire, Livre VIII, Le [[transfert]], o.c., pp. 163-178.