Abstract

This article makes the case for a symmetry between the form and content of Lacan's 1964 seminars on vision in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. As well as theorizing anamorphosis, or visual resistance, as a model of the dialectic between the eye and the gaze, the seminars function to lure and frustrate their auditor-readers. This reading, supported by Lacan's references to his own discourse as a labyrinth and network of threads, shows how a policy of syntactic ambiguity and apparent contradiction seems to inform the logic of the seminars on vision, such that the gaze defies understanding as surely as it resists the eye. The article proposes that this structure of mise-en-abyme, discussed as hypnotic even within the discourse on the gaze, is designed to captivate auditor-readers. Elements within the seminars, as well as Lacan's ‘post-face’ to the published edition, suggest that the discourse is addressed to our unconscious.