Abstract
When it comes to love and hate—these two fundamental passions to which Lacan will add a third passion, that of ignorance—Lacan will first lean on the importance, not of love, but of hate, in the psychoanalytic experience. For the subject, for the child, others come into the world—semblables—or other egos—that the subject engages in relations with. One whole set of these relations are mediated on this Imaginary plane of ego to ego, but, as Lacan describes, mediated through the subject’s ideal ego. Indeed, Lacan will, like Freud, emphasize the relationship of love to the transference. The transference love is indeed love. In Encore, Lacan makes the same formulation. In the very first session, for example, he says that: Love constitutes a sign and is always mutual. Love is impotent, though mutual, because it is not aware that it is but the desire to be One.