Four discourses

[1] Lacan's theory of the four discourses was initially developed in 1969, perhaps in response to the events of social unrest during May 1968 in France, but also through his discovery of what he believed were deficiencies in the orthodox reading of the Oedipus complex.

Prior to the development of the four discourses, the primary guideline for clinical psychoanalysis was Freud's Oedipus complex.

In an effort to stem analysts' tendency to project their own imaginary readings and neurotic fantasies onto psychoanalysis, Lacan worked to formalise psychoanalytic theory with mathematical functions with renewed focus on the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure.

This would ensure only a minimum of teaching is lost when communicated and also provide the conceptual architecture to limit the associations of the analyst.

The four discourses represent the four possible formulations of the symbolic network which social bonds can take and can be expressed as the permutations of a four-term configuration showing the relative positions—the agent, the other, the product and the truth—of four terms, the subject, the master signifier, knowledge and objet petit a.

S1: the dominant, ordering and sense giving signifier of a discourse as it is received by the group, community or culture.

In a modern society, an example of this discourse can be found within so-called “family-like” work environments that tend to hide direct subordination under the mask of “favorable” submission to master's truth that generates value.

Knowledge in position of an agent is handed down by the institute which legitimises the master signifier (S1) taking the place of discourse's truth.

Despite its pathological aura, hysteric's discourse exhibits the most common mode of speech, blurring the line between clinical image and the otherness of social settings.

Slavoj Žižek uses the theory to explain various cultural artefacts, including Don Giovanni and Parsifal.