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[[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]].
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.
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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).
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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]]
(1977b[1964]:235) can exemplify this.
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]].
==Definition==
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]].
==References==
{{S8}}
* Le Séminaire, Livre VIII, Le [[transfert]], o.c., pp. 163-178.
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
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