The Phallus as a Signifier in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject and Gender
The Phallus as a Signifier in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject and Gender: Why a Fundamental Psychoanalytic Concept Is Constantly Misunderstood
The Phallus as a Signifier in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject and Gender: Why a Fundamental Psychoanalytic Concept Is Constantly Misunderstood
DESCRIPTION:
The phallus as a signifier in Lacan’s theory of the subject and gender: how the phallus as a signifier shapes desire. For Lacan, the phallus denotes a signifier of lack and desire. Why equating it with the organ is misleading, and what the concept reveals about power and desire.
The Phallus in Lacan: Why a Fundamental Psychoanalytic Concept Is Constantly Misunderstood
Hardly any concept in psychoanalysis is as reliably misinterpreted as the phallus. Most people hear the word and think of an organ. For Jacques Lacan, the phallus refers to a signifier, a sign within the order of language. It shares only its name with the anatomical body part. This article clarifies what Lacan actually says, where the misunderstanding stems from, and why this distinction matters for clinical practice and cultural criticism.
Why do so many people confuse the phallus with the penis?
The misunderstanding has a simple root. The word sounds anatomical, and in everyday language, the phallus is known almost exclusively as a metaphor for the male member. Anyone reading Lacan for the first time reflexively applies this meaning to the text and ends up with a caricature in which psychoanalysis supposedly reduces everything to an organ.
Lacan himself anticipated this confusion and sought to prevent it. In his 1958 lecture ‘The Meaning of the Phallus’, he explicitly distinguishes the phallus from the penis. The penis is a part of the body. The phallus is a signifier, that is, an element of the symbolic order that produces meaning without itself being a thing. This distinction is the prerequisite for understanding Lacan at all.
The effort is worthwhile because the whole theory hinges on this point. If one interprets the phallus as an organ, Lacan’s theory becomes a form of biologism that derives gender roles from physical anatomy. If one interprets the phallus as a signifier, a way of thinking about desire, language and power opens up that has little to do with anatomy and concerns men and women alike.
What does ‘signifier’ actually mean?
The term originates from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. In his model, a sign consists of two parts: the signifier – that is, the sound or the written word – and the signified – that is, the idea it evokes. The word ‘tree’ is the signifier; the idea of a tree is the signified. There is no natural connection between the two, only a convention within the linguistic community.
Lacan shifts this model. For him, the signifier takes precedence. Meaning arises only through signifiers referring to one another – one word to the next, one sign to another. The human being enters this order as if into an already functioning network of language, names and laws, which Lacan calls the symbolic. This network shapes the subject before it even begins to speak itself.
Within this framework, the phallus is a special signifier. Lacan calls it the privileged signifier because it marks the effect of signification as a whole – the fact that language always already creates meaning whilst simultaneously excluding something. It stands for the point at which desire and language intersect. In doing so, he designates a logical location within the structure. It has nothing to do with masculinity.
How did Freud arrive at the phallus? Oedipus and castration
To understand Lacan, one must go back to Sigmund Freud. In the Oedipus complex, Freud describes an early constellation in which the child desires one parent and perceives the other as a rival. This tension is resolved through the threat of castration: the child renounces its immediate desires, internalises the prohibition and develops a superego. The moral authority emerges from this conflict.
Freud placed the phallus at the centre of this development. In his thinking, early childhood sexuality revolves around the question of who has the phallus and who does not. According to Freud, the perception of this anatomical difference triggers castration anxiety in boys and so-called penis envy in girls – a feeling of deficiency in the face of the missing organ.
Historical caution is called for here. Freud presented penis envy as a biological fact, and even his contemporary Karen Horney vigorously contradicted this. Horney argued that Freud mistook the conditions of a male-dominated society for nature. What he interpreted as envy of an organ was, in fact, the desire for the rights and freedoms granted to men. Her 1926 essay ‘The Escape from Femininity’ accused early psychoanalysis of a phallocentric bias because its founders were men. This justified criticism forms part of any honest account of the subject.
Lacan’s turn of phrase: the phallus as a signifier of lack
Lacan takes up Horney’s objection by detaching Freud’s concept from biology. In his view, the phallus loses any connection to a specific organ and becomes the signifier of lack. This changes everything. The lack in question affects every speaking human being, because every person loses something upon entering into language.
This loss can be described as follows. As long as the infant has no language, it experiences itself as inseparable from the mother, in a state of flawless abundance. As soon as it begins to speak, the word interposes itself between the infant and the world. Every desire must now pass through language; it must be named and directed towards others. In this passage, the original abundance is lost. The phallus is the signifier that designates this loss precisely: the hole that language tears into being.
That is why, for Lacan, the phallus is both a sign of lack and of desire. It stands for something that is missing, and because it is missing, desire arises. One desires because one is not whole. The phallus marks the point at which wholeness has been lost, and thereby keeps desire in motion. Without this lack, there would be no desire, only satiation and stagnation.
‘To have the phallus’ or ‘to be the phallus’ – what is the difference?
Lacan introduces a subtle distinction that makes his departure from anatomy particularly clear. He speaks of having the phallus and being the phallus. Both positions are ways of relating to the signifier of desire, and neither is tied to a particular gender. No one truly has the phallus. It is a signifier that one can neither possess nor lose.
The male position, in Lacan’s sense, is oriented towards having the phallus. It presents itself as possessing that which arouses desire, and must constantly maintain this pretence. This is precisely where its weakness lies, for possession is a fiction. The man puts on a show of abundance that he does not possess, and lives in fear of being exposed as an impostor. Lacan’s formulations here highlight the fragility of male self-representation.
The female position is oriented towards being the phallus, that is, embodying what the other desires. Within this logic, women take the place of the desired object and become the sign towards which the other’s desire is directed. Both positions are masks covering the same lack. Lacan is thus describing two structural responses to the question of how one deals with one’s own inadequacy. He does not mean by this the essential characteristics of men and women.
Why is desire always the desire of the Other?
One phrase runs through Lacan’s work: ‘Human desire is the desire of the Other.’ He means this in several senses at once. On the one hand, we desire what another desires. Children want the toy that another child is currently holding. The value of an object depends on the gaze of others, not on its intrinsic qualities.
On the other hand, we desire to be desired by the Other. The deeper question behind every desire is what the Other sees in us and whether we matter to them. For Lacan, the Big Other is the symbolic order itself – the field of language, culture and law into which we speak. Our desire takes shape according to what this field presents to us as desirable.
The phallus is the signifier around which this desire revolves. It is the privileged signifier of the Other’s desire, the point around which desires are organised. Because no one possesses it, the question of it remains open, and desire finds no repose. This structure explains why people rarely get what they believe they want, and why the object of desire keeps shifting.
What does the Name-of-the-Father have to do with this?
According to Lacan, entry into the symbolic order requires an authority that sets boundaries. He calls this authority the Name-of-the-Father. What is meant is a signifier that represents the law, foremost among which is the incest taboo. This does not refer to a real, flesh-and-blood father. The Name-of-the-Father separates the child from its close bond with the mother and assigns it a place within the order of generations and names.
This separation is symbolic castration. Lacan understands this to mean the renunciation that accompanies speech, not a physical process. The child gives up the fantasy of being everything to the mother and of filling her lack. It accepts that it is limited, that it is subject to rules, and that its desire will never be fully satisfied. This renunciation is the price for entry into language and the law.
Symbolic castration is thus a gain that appears as a loss. Those who undergo it become subjects capable of speaking, desiring and living with others. If the Name-of-the-Father is absent, according to Lacan, the point of reference to which order is anchored is missing, which he associates with severe psychological conditions such as psychosis. The phallus and the Name-of-the-Father are closely linked, because both mark the point at which the law intervenes in desire.
The phallus as a sign of both power and lack
Cultural history is full of towering structures that assert power. Obelisks in central squares, towers, monuments and status symbols that flaunt their height and rigidity. They are easily read as phallic signs, and in a certain sense, this is true. They assert abundance, potency and dominion over the surroundings.
Lacan’s interpretation adds a second layer. The monument asserts power precisely because it must conceal a lack. It displays a possession that no one truly has, and the louder the assertion, the greater the void beneath it. Status symbols operate according to the same logic. They are meant to bear witness to the fact that their bearer attracts the desire of others, and in doing so betray a dependence on precisely this external gaze.
Therein lies the dual nature of the phallic sign. It is a sign of both power and lack, because the gesture of power presupposes the lack it conceals. Once one has recognised this structure, one recognises it in many spheres: in the politics of high-profile appearances, in the economics of prestige, and in self-presentation on social media platforms. Psychoanalysis provides a tool here for looking behind the façade of strength.
The key points in brief
• For Lacan, the phallus refers to a signifier, an element of the order of language. It shares only its name with the anatomical organ.
• As a signifier of lack, it denotes the loss that every human being suffers upon entering the realm of language. Desire arises from this lack.
• Freud placed the phallus at the centre of his theory, linking it to the Oedipus complex, castration and penis envy. Karen Horney was an early critic of penis envy as an interpretation of social inequality as a matter of nature.
• Lacan detaches the concept from biology: it applies to both men and women and describes a logical structure, not a physical attribute.
• ‘To have the phallus’ and ‘to be the phallus’ are two positions in relation to desire, not two genders. Both are masks covering the same lack.
• Desire is always the desire for the Other. We want what others want, and we want to be desired by them.
• The Name-of-the-Father stands for the Law. Symbolic castration is the renunciation through which the child becomes a speaking subject.
• Culturally, the phallus is a symbol of both power and lack: the gesture of power conceals the emptiness on which it is based.
Sources
• No Subject – Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis: The Signification of the Phallus. https://nosubject.com/The_Signification_of_the_Phallus
• No Subject – Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Phallus. https://nosubject.com/Phallus
• Cahiers pour l’Analyse (Kingston University): Phallus. https://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/concepts/phallus.html
• London School of Economics (eprints): Lacan, the meaning of the phallus and the ‘sexed’ subject. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/960/1/Lacanthemeaning.pdf
• Deciphering Lacan: The phallus as signifier of (sacrificed) jouissance. https://lacan-entziffern.de/phallus/phallus/
• Deciphering Lacan: The imaginary and the symbolic phallus (1957–1959). https://lacan-entziffern.de/kastration/lrstll/
• Wikipedia: Name-of-the-Father. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name-des-Vaters
• The British Psychological Society: Sigmund Freud and penis envy – a failure of courage? https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/sigmund-freud-and-penis-envy-failure-courage
• Wikipedia: Penis envy (Karen Horney, womb envy, Flight from Womanhood). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy
Related
DESCRIPTION:
The phallus as a signifier in Lacan’s theory of the subject and gender: how the phallus as a signifier shapes desire. For Lacan, the phallus denotes a signifier of lack and desire. Why equating it with the organ is misleading, and what the concept reveals about power and desire.
The Phallus in Lacan: Why a Fundamental Psychoanalytic Concept Is Constantly Misunderstood
Hardly any concept in psychoanalysis is as reliably misinterpreted as the phallus. Most people hear the word and think of an organ. For Jacques Lacan, the phallus refers to a signifier, a sign within the order of language. It shares only its name with the anatomical body part. This article clarifies what Lacan actually says, where the misunderstanding stems from, and why this distinction matters for clinical practice and cultural criticism.
Why do so many people confuse the phallus with the penis?
The misunderstanding has a simple root. The word sounds anatomical, and in everyday language, the phallus is known almost exclusively as a metaphor for the male member. Anyone reading Lacan for the first time reflexively applies this meaning to the text and ends up with a caricature in which psychoanalysis supposedly reduces everything to an organ.
Lacan himself anticipated this confusion and sought to prevent it. In his 1958 lecture ‘The Meaning of the Phallus’, he explicitly distinguishes the phallus from the penis. The penis is a part of the body. The phallus is a signifier, that is, an element of the symbolic order that produces meaning without itself being a thing. This distinction is the prerequisite for understanding Lacan at all.
The effort is worthwhile because the whole theory hinges on this point. If one interprets the phallus as an organ, Lacan’s theory becomes a form of biologism that derives gender roles from physical anatomy. If one interprets the phallus as a signifier, a way of thinking about desire, language and power opens up that has little to do with anatomy and concerns men and women alike.
What does ‘signifier’ actually mean?
The term originates from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. In his model, a sign consists of two parts: the signifier – that is, the sound or the written word – and the signified – that is, the idea it evokes. The word ‘tree’ is the signifier; the idea of a tree is the signified. There is no natural connection between the two, only a convention within the linguistic community.
Lacan shifts this model. For him, the signifier takes precedence. Meaning arises only through signifiers referring to one another – one word to the next, one sign to another. The human being enters this order as if into an already functioning network of language, names and laws, which Lacan calls the symbolic. This network shapes the subject before it even begins to speak itself.
Within this framework, the phallus is a special signifier. Lacan calls it the privileged signifier because it marks the effect of signification as a whole – the fact that language always already creates meaning whilst simultaneously excluding something. It stands for the point at which desire and language intersect. In doing so, he designates a logical location within the structure. It has nothing to do with masculinity.
How did Freud arrive at the phallus? Oedipus and castration
To understand Lacan, one must go back to Sigmund Freud. In the Oedipus complex, Freud describes an early constellation in which the child desires one parent and perceives the other as a rival. This tension is resolved through the threat of castration: the child renounces its immediate desires, internalises the prohibition and develops a superego. The moral authority emerges from this conflict.
Freud placed the phallus at the centre of this development. In his thinking, early childhood sexuality revolves around the question of who has the phallus and who does not. According to Freud, the perception of this anatomical difference triggers castration anxiety in boys and so-called penis envy in girls – a feeling of deficiency in the face of the missing organ.
Historical caution is called for here. Freud presented penis envy as a biological fact, and even his contemporary Karen Horney vigorously contradicted this. Horney argued that Freud mistook the conditions of a male-dominated society for nature. What he interpreted as envy of an organ was, in fact, the desire for the rights and freedoms granted to men. Her 1926 essay ‘The Escape from Femininity’ accused early psychoanalysis of a phallocentric bias because its founders were men. This justified criticism forms part of any honest account of the subject.
Lacan’s turn of phrase: the phallus as a signifier of lack
Lacan takes up Horney’s objection by detaching Freud’s concept from biology. In his view, the phallus loses any connection to a specific organ and becomes the signifier of lack. This changes everything. The lack in question affects every speaking human being, because every person loses something upon entering into language.
This loss can be described as follows. As long as the infant has no language, it experiences itself as inseparable from the mother, in a state of flawless abundance. As soon as it begins to speak, the word interposes itself between the infant and the world. Every desire must now pass through language; it must be named and directed towards others. In this passage, the original abundance is lost. The phallus is the signifier that designates this loss precisely: the hole that language tears into being.
That is why, for Lacan, the phallus is both a sign of lack and of desire. It stands for something that is missing, and because it is missing, desire arises. One desires because one is not whole. The phallus marks the point at which wholeness has been lost, and thereby keeps desire in motion. Without this lack, there would be no desire, only satiation and stagnation.
‘To have the phallus’ or ‘to be the phallus’ – what is the difference?
Lacan introduces a subtle distinction that makes his departure from anatomy particularly clear. He speaks of having the phallus and being the phallus. Both positions are ways of relating to the signifier of desire, and neither is tied to a particular gender. No one truly has the phallus. It is a signifier that one can neither possess nor lose.
The male position, in Lacan’s sense, is oriented towards having the phallus. It presents itself as possessing that which arouses desire, and must constantly maintain this pretence. This is precisely where its weakness lies, for possession is a fiction. The man puts on a show of abundance that he does not possess, and lives in fear of being exposed as an impostor. Lacan’s formulations here highlight the fragility of male self-representation.
The female position is oriented towards being the phallus, that is, embodying what the other desires. Within this logic, women take the place of the desired object and become the sign towards which the other’s desire is directed. Both positions are masks covering the same lack. Lacan is thus describing two structural responses to the question of how one deals with one’s own inadequacy. He does not mean by this the essential characteristics of men and women.
Why is desire always the desire of the Other?
One phrase runs through Lacan’s work: ‘Human desire is the desire of the Other.’ He means this in several senses at once. On the one hand, we desire what another desires. Children want the toy that another child is currently holding. The value of an object depends on the gaze of others, not on its intrinsic qualities.
On the other hand, we desire to be desired by the Other. The deeper question behind every desire is what the Other sees in us and whether we matter to them. For Lacan, the Big Other is the symbolic order itself – the field of language, culture and law into which we speak. Our desire takes shape according to what this field presents to us as desirable.
The phallus is the signifier around which this desire revolves. It is the privileged signifier of the Other’s desire, the point around which desires are organised. Because no one possesses it, the question of it remains open, and desire finds no repose. This structure explains why people rarely get what they believe they want, and why the object of desire keeps shifting.
What does the Name-of-the-Father have to do with this?
According to Lacan, entry into the symbolic order requires an authority that sets boundaries. He calls this authority the Name-of-the-Father. What is meant is a signifier that represents the law, foremost among which is the incest taboo. This does not refer to a real, flesh-and-blood father. The Name-of-the-Father separates the child from its close bond with the mother and assigns it a place within the order of generations and names.
This separation is symbolic castration. Lacan understands this to mean the renunciation that accompanies speech, not a physical process. The child gives up the fantasy of being everything to the mother and of filling her lack. It accepts that it is limited, that it is subject to rules, and that its desire will never be fully satisfied. This renunciation is the price for entry into language and the law.
Symbolic castration is thus a gain that appears as a loss. Those who undergo it become subjects capable of speaking, desiring and living with others. If the Name-of-the-Father is absent, according to Lacan, the point of reference to which order is anchored is missing, which he associates with severe psychological conditions such as psychosis. The phallus and the Name-of-the-Father are closely linked, because both mark the point at which the law intervenes in desire.
The phallus as a sign of both power and lack
Cultural history is full of towering structures that assert power. Obelisks in central squares, towers, monuments and status symbols that flaunt their height and rigidity. They are easily read as phallic signs, and in a certain sense, this is true. They assert abundance, potency and dominion over the surroundings.
Lacan’s interpretation adds a second layer. The monument asserts power precisely because it must conceal a lack. It displays a possession that no one truly has, and the louder the assertion, the greater the void beneath it. Status symbols operate according to the same logic. They are meant to bear witness to the fact that their bearer attracts the desire of others, and in doing so betray a dependence on precisely this external gaze.
Therein lies the dual nature of the phallic sign. It is a sign of both power and lack, because the gesture of power presupposes the lack it conceals. Once one has recognised this structure, one recognises it in many spheres: in the politics of high-profile appearances, in the economics of prestige, and in self-presentation on social media platforms. Psychoanalysis provides a tool here for looking behind the façade of strength.
The key points in brief
• For Lacan, the phallus refers to a signifier, an element of the order of language. It shares only its name with the anatomical organ.
• As a signifier of lack, it denotes the loss that every human being suffers upon entering the realm of language. Desire arises from this lack.
• Freud placed the phallus at the centre of his theory, linking it to the Oedipus complex, castration and penis envy. Karen Horney was an early critic of penis envy as an interpretation of social inequality as a matter of nature.
• Lacan detaches the concept from biology: it applies to both men and women and describes a logical structure, not a physical attribute.
• ‘To have the phallus’ and ‘to be the phallus’ are two positions in relation to desire, not two genders. Both are masks covering the same lack.
• Desire is always the desire for the Other. We want what others want, and we want to be desired by them.
• The Name-of-the-Father stands for the Law. Symbolic castration is the renunciation through which the child becomes a speaking subject.
• Culturally, the phallus is a symbol of both power and lack: the gesture of power conceals the emptiness on which it is based.
Sources
• No Subject – Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis: The Signification of the Phallus. https://nosubject.com/The_Signification_of_the_Phallus
• No Subject – Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Phallus. https://nosubject.com/Phallus
• Cahiers pour l’Analyse (Kingston University): Phallus. https://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/concepts/phallus.html
• London School of Economics (eprints): Lacan, the meaning of the phallus and the ‘sexed’ subject. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/960/1/Lacanthemeaning.pdf
• Deciphering Lacan: The phallus as signifier of (sacrificed) jouissance. https://lacan-entziffern.de/phallus/phallus/
• Deciphering Lacan: The imaginary and the symbolic phallus (1957–1959). https://lacan-entziffern.de/kastration/lrstll/
• Wikipedia: Name-of-the-Father. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name-des-Vaters
• The British Psychological Society: Sigmund Freud and penis envy – a failure of courage? https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/sigmund-freud-and-penis-envy-failure-courage
• Wikipedia: Penis envy (Karen Horney, womb envy, Flight from Womanhood). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy