Objet petit a

In the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a ("object little-a") stands for the unattainable object of desire. It is sometimes called the object cause of desire. Lacan always insisted that the term should remain untranslated, "thus acquiring the status of an algebraic sign" (Écrits).

'The "a" in question stands for "autre" (other), the concept having been developed out of the Freudian "object" and Lacan's own exploitation of "otherness."

Jacques-Alain Miller pointed to the origins of object (a) in Freud's 'lost object...the function that Freud discovered in the Three Essays...and that Karl Abraham made the crux of his theory of development from which he derived the first premises of the "partial object"'.

Thereafter, according to Miller, Melanie Klein 'located the partial object at the centre of psychic economy...hence it was that Winnicott glimpsed the transitional object.' That long prehistory of object relations 'is what Lacan sums up, condenses, justifies and constructs with object a.'

'In Lacan's seminars of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the evolving concept of the objet (petit) a is viewed in the matheme of phantasy as the object of desire sought in the other...a deliberate departure from British Object Relations psychoanalysis'.

In 1957, in his Seminar Les formations de l'inconscient, Lacan introduces the concept of objet petit a as the (Kleinian) imaginary part-object, an element which is imagined as separable from the rest of the body. In the Seminar Le transfert (1960–1961) he articulates objet a with the term agalma (Greek, an ornament). Just as the agalma is a precious object hidden in a worthless box, so objet petit a is the object of desire which we seek in the Other. The "box" can take many forms, all of which are unimportant, the importance lies in what is "inside" the box, the cause of desire.

In the Seminars L'angoisse (1962–1963) and The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), objet petit a is defined as the leftover, the remnant left behind by the introduction of the Symbolic in the Real. This is further elaborated in the Seminar The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969–1970), where Lacan elaborates his Four discourses. In the discourse of the Master, one signifier attempts to represent the subject for all other signifiers, but a surplus is always produced: this surplus is objet petit a, a surplus meaning, a surplus of jouissance.

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