Symptom/Sinthome (International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis)
Lacan defined the symptom in several ways: as a metaphor, as
"that which comes from the real," as "that which doesn't work,"
and at the end of his teaching, as a structural fact, whose
necessity must be questioned. In 1953 (2002a) Lacan emphasized
that the analytic symptom neurotic, perverse, or even psychotic
symptom; a dream; a slip; and so onas sustained by a linguistic
structure, by signifiers, and by the letters that serve as their
material element.  In contrast to medical symptoms, the meaning
of which is determined in relation to a referent, the neurotic
symptom is blocked speech wanting to be heard and deciphered.
Lacan saw the mechanism of metaphor at work in the symptom: when
a trauma-inducing signifier is substituted for an element of the
current signifying chain, it fixes the symptom and produces its
meaning (2002b, p. 158). But interpreting its meaning is not
enough. Interpretation works only by focusing on the
articulation of the sig