A Study of Anxiety from the Lacanian Psychoanalytic Perspective

This paper examines how Jacques Lacan develops his own singular theory of anxiety based on the desire of Other succeeding Sigmund Freud’s theory of anxiety. Lacan argues that the subject who is necessarily oriented to the desire of Other is awakened to anxiety when the object a, emerging from the Other in the order of the Real, threatens the subject with overwhelming power. So it can be said that in Lacan, the object a is a medium to emerge anxiety to the subject. But the striking point of Lacan’s theory of anxiety is that ironically, the object a can be an signifier for the subject to overcome anxiety and to be free and independent of it. In order to overcome anxiety the subject has to find a way to conform the demand of the Other to the desire of the Other through creating and inventing the object a successively in the order of the Symbolic. I argue that Lacan’s theory of anxiety can help the increasing number of the subjects who are suffering from anxiety due to the excessive demand of the Other in an age of the rapid change of technology and environment. The subjects in the contemporary society can create their own symbolic object a which can relieve them of the helplessness and incompetence from the excessive jouissance power of the Other.