Yes—we can absolutely suppose (and many have argued) that Lacan’s seminars over 30 years possess an “inner logic” of development—but it is not a linear progression, nor a cumulative building toward a system. Instead, it is a spiraling return to certain core problems, each time from a new angle, within a different discourse, and under a shifting constellation of concepts.
In other words:
Lacan’s oeuvre has inner logic, but not system; structure, but not stability; a movement, but not a map.
1. Lacan’s Teaching as a Spiral, Not a Ladder
Lacan was fundamentally against the idea of a closed theory. His seminars are not designed to lead the student from point A to point Z.
Instead, his work unfolds like a spiral or a Möbius strip:
• Ideas return, but transformed by new insights.
• Terms mutate (e.g., objet petit a, the Other, the phallus).
• He deconstructs even his own earlier formulations.
You can see the inner logic in the way:
• The mirror stage gives way to questions of signification.
• The imaginary gives way to the symbolic, and later to the Real.
• Desire gives way to jouissance, and later to drive.
• The subject of speech becomes the barred subject, and eventually the speaking body (parlêtre).
Each shift is not a rejection, but a re-inscription—a way of re-problematizing the subject, truth, and the unconscious.
2. Key Phases (Roughly)
Here’s a very schematic breakdown of the inner logic of the seminars:
|
Phase |
Focus |
Seminars |
|
Early (1953–60) |
Imaginary & Symbolic |
Mirror stage, the I as misrecognition, language as structuring the unconscious. Key seminars: I–VII |
|
Middle (1960–70) |
Desire, the Signifier, the Real |
Objet a, lack, the Real as limit, topology enters. Key seminars: VIII–XVII |
|
Late (1970–80) |
Discourse, Jouissance, the Body |
The four discourses, sinthome, lalangue, the speaking body. Key seminars: XVIII–XXIV+ |
There is a tension between fidelity and reinvention. Lacan is always faithful to the Freudian break, but constantly destabilizing the very tools he uses to approach it.
3. The Logic Is in the Desire to Think Otherwise
Lacan once said:
“I always speak the same thing, but not in the same way.”
That’s the inner logic:
• Not building a pyramid of knowledge
• But turning a prism, letting light pass through old problems in new directions
His seminars are not doctrines, but performative events—where concepts are posed, exposed, and displaced.
4. Lacan and the Logic of the Real
By his later years, Lacan is more focused on:
• What escapes structure (the Real)
• What cannot be spoken, yet insists
• How the body speaks, not just the mind
This leads to the idea that:
The truth of the subject is not in coherence, but in its failure, its symptom, its knotting.
This is the endpoint—but also the starting point—of Lacan’s logic:
Not to find a stable system, but to create a space for the subject’s untruth to speak.
So Yes—There Is an Inner Logic
But it is:
• Torsional, not linear
• Problem-driven, not doctrine-bound
• Recursive, not cumulative
• And grounded in Lacan’s own desire not to close the system, but to keep the unconscious speaking
If you’d like, I can map out a visual timeline of Lacan’s seminars by conceptual turns—or help you follow one concept (e.g. object a, or the Real) across the decades.
