The French word jouissance means basically ‘enjoyment’, but it il has a sexual connotation (i.e. 'orgasm') lacking in the English word ‘enjoyment’, and is therefore left untranslated in most English editions of Lacan (though it has since been pointed out that the word ‘jouissance’ does actually figure in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary; cf. Macey, 1988: 288, n.129). As Jane Gallop observes, whereas orgasm is a countable noun, the term jouissance is always used in the singular by Lacan, and is always preceded by a definite article (Gallop, 1982: 30).

The term does not appear in I.acan's work until 1953, but even then it is not particularly salient (E, 42, 87). In the seminars of 1933-4 and 1954-5 Lacan uses the term occasionally, usually in the context of the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave: the slave is forced to work to provide objects for the master's enjoyment (jouissance) (S1, 223; S2, 269). Up to 1957, then, the term seems to mean no more than the enjoyable sensation that accompanies the satisfaction of a biological need such as hunger (S4, 125). Soon after, the sexual connotations become more apparent; in 1957, Lacan uses the term to refer to the enjoyment of a sexual object (Ec, 453) and to the pleasures of masturbation (S4, 241), and in 1958 he makes explicit the sense of jouissance as orgasm (Ec, 727). (For a fuller description of the development of this term in Lacan's work, see Macey, 1988: 200-5).

It is only in I960 that Lacan develops his classic opposition between jouissance and pleasure, an opposition which alludes to the Hegelian/Kojevian distinction between Genuβ (enjoyment) and Lust (pleasure) (cl. Kojève, 1947: 46). The pleausure principle functions as a limit to enjoyment; it is a law which commands the subject to ‘enjoy as little as possible’. At the same lime, the subject constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go ‘beyond the pleasure principle’. However, the result of transgressing the pleasure principle is not more pleasure, but pain, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can hear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this ‘painful pleasure’ is what Lacan calls jouissance: 'jouissance is suffering' (S7. 184). The term jouissance thus nicely expresses the paradoxical satisfaction that the subject derives from his symptom, or, to put it another way, the suffering that he derives from his own satisfaction (Frend's ‘primary gain from illness’).

The prohibition of jouissance (the pleasure principle) is inherent in the symbolic structure of language, which is why 'jouissance is forbidden to him who speaks, as such’ (E. 319). The subject's entry into the symbolic is conditional upon a certain initial renunciation of jouissance in the castration complex, when the subject gives up his attempts to be the imaginary phallus for the mother: ‘Castration means that jouissance must be refused so that it can be reached on the inverted ladder (l'échelle renversée) of the Law of desire’ (E, 324). The symbolic prohibition of enjoyment in the Oedipus complex (the incest taboo) is thus, paradoxically, the prohibition of something which is already impossible; its function is therefore to sustain the neurotic illusion that enjoyment would be attainable if it were not forbidden. The very prohibition creates the desire to transgress it, and jouissance is therefore fundamentally transgressive (see S7, ch.15).

The death drive is the name given to that constant desire in the subject to break through the pleasure principle towards the THING and a certain excess jouissance; thus jouissance is ‘the path towards death’ (S17, 17). Insofar as the drives are attempts to break through the pleasure principle in search of jouissance, every drive is a death drive.

There are strong affinities between Lacan's concept of jouissance and Freud's concept of the LIBIDO, as is clear from Lacan's description of jouissauce as a ‘bodily substance’ (S20, 26). In keeping with Freud's assertion that there is only one libido, which is masculine. Lacan states that jouissance is essentially phallic; 'Jouissance, insofar as it is sexual, is phallic, which means that it does not relate to the Other as such’ (S20, 14). However, in 1973 Lacan admits that there is a specifically feminine jouissance, a ‘supplementary jouissance’ (S20, 58) which is ‘beyond the phallus’ (S20, 69), a jouissance of the Other. This feminine jouissance is ineffable, for women experience it a but know nothing about it (S20. 71). In order to differentiate between these two forms of jouissance, Lacan introduces different algebraic symbols for each; Jφ designates phallic jouissance, whereas JA designates the jouissance of the Other.