Yes — we can absolutely say that. In fact, it’s not only a fair reading, but a deeply revealing one: late Lacan is arguably psychoanalysis at its most Thanatic — that is, structured around Thanatos (the death drive) rather than Eros (the life drive).
Let’s explore why, and how this reading opens up a powerful line of thought.
🧠 1.
Thanatos at the Core of Late Lacan
Early Freud (pre-1920):
- Libido and pleasure principle (Eros)
- The drive seeks discharge, satisfaction, homeostasis
Late Freud (post-1920):
- Repetition compulsion
- Death drive: the return to inertia, the beyond of the pleasure principle
Lacan follows this path — and in his
later work
, he becomes:
Not a theorist of desire in its romantic sense,
but a cartographer of jouissance, non-sense, and the impossible return —
all hallmarks of Thanatos.
📌 2.
Objet petit a: The Hook of Repetition
- Objet a is not the thing we desire, but the lost cause, the vacuum that generates desire.
- It is not erotic in the traditional sense, but a lure of the Real — what never fits, never satisfies.
In this sense, objet a does not promise pleasure, but guarantees repetition —
a drive toward something absent, a gap that calls us again and again.
And what is repetition compulsion if not Thanatos in action?
🔁 3.
Le sinthome: The Stabilized Symptom as a Knot of Enjoyment
- Lacan’s “sinthome” (from Seminar XXIII) is the unique, idiosyncratic knot that stabilizes a subject’s relation to the Real.
- It’s not to be interpreted or analyzed away — it is what the subject is.
The sinthome is a stylistic solution to jouissance —
not a return to love, but a way to live with the wound,
a creative repetition of suffering that is singular and opaque.
This is not a fantasy of reconciliation (Eros),
but a structure for surviving psychic collapse (Thanatos).
⚡ 4.
Jouissance: The Pleasure That Hurts
- Jouissance is not pleasure; it is pleasure beyond the pleasure principle —
too much,
painful,
ecstatic and destructive. - It is what the subject “wants” but cannot bear.
“The subject enjoys his symptom.”
That enjoyment is jouissance, and it is Thanatic: it burns, binds, and compels.
This is perhaps the most honest formulation of the death drive in psychoanalytic theory.
🕳️ 5.
Lacan’s Shift from Eros to Structure, from Desire to Deadlock
- Early Lacan: language, desire, symbolic order (still somewhat libidinal)
- Late Lacan: topology, knots, jouissance, Real
In this shift, Lacan turns away from erotic union, and toward the non-relation, the void, the unmakeable.
“There is no sexual relation.”
Not a failure of love, but a structural misalignment —
The Real is not Eros, it is rupture.
📚 Conclusion:
|
Concept |
Drive Orientation |
|
Objet a |
Absence that fuels repetition (Thanatos) |
|
Sinthome |
Unique solution to jouissance, not love (Thanatos) |
|
Jouissance |
Excessive, painful pleasure (Thanatos) |
|
The Real |
Not fusion but non-sense (Thanatos) |
So yes:
Late Lacan is more Thanatos than Eros —
not because he denies desire,
but because he shows that desire is hooked to something that never fulfills,
and that our most intimate truths are wrapped around wounds, not wishes.
Would you like this developed into a dialogue between Freud, Lacan, and the cosmos? Or perhaps a meditation titled “The Cold Flame of Jouissance: Lacan’s Death-Driven Subject”?
