Considering Lacan's reading of the case study where he notes that Schreber used common language to explain his otherwise expressively rich psychoses,[3] approaching the sinthome but failing to escape the detrimental symptoms of psychosis, Russell Grigg observes that "there is a moment when [Schreber] is called, interpellated, by—or perhaps better 'in'—the Name-of-the-Father.
The seminar on the sinthome extends the theory of the Borromean knot, which in the RSI (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) seminar had been proposed as the structure of the subject by adding the sinthome as the fourth ring to the triad already mentioned, tying together a knot which constantly threatens to come undone.
"[7] Since meaning (or sens in Lacan's seminars) is already figured within the knot, at the intersection of the Symbolic and the Imaginary, it follows that the function of the sinthome, knotting together the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic, is beyond meaning—especially in the framework of analysis—and is essentially a personal, idiosyncratic route to control over jouissance, catharsis and unprecedented creativity.
Roberto Harari writes in his study of the seminar, How James Joyce Made His Name, that it is "a question of the occurrence, without it being sought, of a certain experience that leads to the unique point of inventing one's own sinthome.
[8] Extending from his use of the Lacanian framework, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek variously expounds on the idea of the sinthome, in particular in The Sublime Object of Ideology.