A Lacanian Reading of Romeo - Juliet (Final)

Contemporary Psychoanalysis
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uucp20
The Tragedy of Love: A Study of Love And Death in

Jacques Lacan’s Thought, With Special Reference
to Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet
Mohammad Ghaffary & Ghiasuddin Alizadeh
To cite this article: Mohammad Ghaffary & Ghiasuddin Alizadeh (2021) The Tragedy of
Love: A Study of Love And Death in Jacques Lacan’s Thought, With Special Reference to
Shakespeare’s Romeo�And�Juliet, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 57:3-4, 596-629, DOI:
10.1080/00107530.2021.2021827
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00107530.2021.2021827
Published online: 10 Jan 2022.
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Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 2021, Vol. 57, No. 3-4: 596–629.
# William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology and
the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society
ISSN: 0010-7530 print / 2330-9091 online
DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2021.2021827
MOHAMMAD GHAFFARY, Ph.D., AND GHIASUDDIN ALIZADEH, Ph.D.
THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE: A STUDY OF LOVE

AND DEATH IN JACQUES LACAN’S THOUGHT,
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SHAKESPEARE’S
ROMEO AND JULIET
Abstract. Love is a significant concept in Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory

that, compared to other concepts, has received little attention from Lacan
scholars and Lacanian literary critics. Through offering an analysis of the con-
cept of love in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and its connection with the
Lacanian notions of desire, subjectivity, fantasy, the Real, and death (drive),
this article seeks to delineate Lacan’s contribution to the philosophy of love.
Following a general exploration of the love between Romeo and Juliet, several
passages of Shakespeare’s play are studied with regard to basic questions in
Lacanian philosophy of love: the nature of love, the reason why one loves
another, the effects of love upon the individual’s subjectivity, the difference
between love and desire, and the relation between love and death. The
authors argue that Lacanian concepts, such as object petit a, and the Symbolic,
illuminate aspects of Romeo and Juliet’s love, leading them to know that their
desire cannot be fulfilled and that there is always something more to be
desired. In this tragedy, neither Romeo nor Juliet can understand what the
other desires, and what they believe they themselves desire is merely an illu-
sive construct of their own fantasies.
Keywords: desire, the Symbolic, the Real, objet petit a, fantasy, love, death,
Romeo and Juliet
Address correspondence to Mohammad Ghaffary, Ph.D., Department of English, Arak

University, Arak, Iran. Email: m-ghaffary@araku.ac.ir
596
THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE 597
Introduction: Jacques Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Literature
J acques Lacan (1901–81) was one of the most influential critical

thinkers of the twentieth century. His career can be described as a
movement from Structuralism to Poststructuralism. Like many other
post-Hegelian Continental thinkers, he is famous—among other
things—for the complexity and inaccessibility of his writing. Apart
from being a Continental thinker, what makes his writing (“ecrits”) and
seminars more difficult is the fact that the boundaries between his
terms and concepts seem all too blurry. The more one reads Lacan,
the more one gets confused, partly because—throughout his career—
he repeatedly redefined his major concepts, at times assigning new
meanings without explicitly disavowing the earlier significances. If one
were to summarize Lacan’s major contribution to psychoanalytic the-
ory, one might say that he enlarged Freudian psychoanalysis and,
especially in the early phase of his career, tried to reformulate it within
the framework of Structuralist linguistics. Put more explicitly, in one of
his seminal essays, Lacan (2006a) adopts Ferdinand de Saussure’s (de
Saussure, 1974) concept of the sign1 as well as Roman Jakobson’s the-
ory of metaphor/metonymy2 and applies them to Freud’s path-
breaking discovery, the unconscious. However, he rethinks Saussure’s
semiotic theory by questioning the immediate relationship between
1
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1974), the originator of the Structuralist
movement in humanities, coined the term “semiology” as the name of a new discipline
for exploring the structures of different human behaviors, a branch of which was
“linguistics,” the study of the structure of human (verbal) language. Semiotics/semiology
is the study of signs, sign systems, and the process of signification, i.e., how semiotic/
linguistic systems—like mythology, verbal language, images, moving pictures, fashion,
sport matches, literary works, etc.—make meaning in the process of social
communication. Each sign, the unit of language as a semiotic system, comprises two
elements: the “signifier” and the “signified.” When we read or hear a word, based on its
form, a general image of the sound or written form of that word comes to our minds,
which is the signifier. The signifier, in turn, brings to our minds an idea or concept of
what that image means. This concept is the signified, another mental image that should
not be confused with its “referent,” i.e., a specific real object in the external world.
2
Building on Saussure’s work, the Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson (1971)
identified two major axes or poles in language as a semiotic system, namely metaphoric
and metonymic. In using language, we first select proper signifiers to verbalize our
mental concepts (the “metaphoric” pole, analogous to the poetic figure of metaphor in
which a concept is substituted for another). Next, we combine them according to the
laws of grammar (syntax) to form more complex units of language like sentences (the
“metonymic” pole, comparable to the literary figure termed metonymy in which a term is
replaced with another that is somehow related to it).
598 MOHAMMAD GHAFFARY, Ph.D., AND GHIASUDDIN ALIZADEH, Ph.D.
the signifier and the signified, and this is the reason why he is some-
times associated with the Poststructuralist movement.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to offer a synoptic definition for
such Lacanian concepts as the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real,
for—in the course of his career—Lacan constantly revises and rede-
fines them; therefore, they cannot be deemed fixed or lucid categories
capable of simple conceptual analysis. This notwithstanding, in the
secondary literature on Lacanian psychoanalysis, mostly for the pur-
poses of providing an interpretive model for literary and cultural stud-
ies, researchers have had to reduce the intricate, multifarious web of
Lacanian thought to analytic, to-the-point categories, a brief account of
which is offered below.
Basically, Lacan argues that there are three orders or stages involved
in a child’s psychic development: the Imaginary order, the Symbolic
order, and the Real order. The Imaginary order starts with our birth
and lasts about six months. According to Lacan, during this period we
are completely attached to and dependent on our mothers. This union
is very joyful for us, to the extent that we are not able to differentiate
between our mothers and ourselves. At the time between six and eight
months, a minor phase called the “Mirror Stage” begins, which lasts
until around the eighteenth month. In this stage, according to one
interpretation of Lacan, infants literally see themselves in a mirror
while metaphorically seeing themselves in the mother’s image
(Bressler, 2011, p. 134). In this way, the infant becomes gradually
aware of themself as an autonomous being/body (“ego” formation),
but this sense of ego is a mere illusion (a “mis-recognition”) and the
child is not in full control.
The Symbolic order begins the moment the child learns that they
are an independent individual, separate from the mother. During this
phase, which is the initiation of the subject’s individuation and social
life, the child learns language, i.e., a symbolic system of signification,
and begins to name things. As the child becomes separated from the
mother, they start to feel a sense of loss or lack, and throughout the
rest of the child’s life they will unconsciously lament this loss or try to
recover it. The use of language in this second phase implies that we
are afflicted with a loss because we would not need words as substitu-
tions for things themselves if we had direct access to them. This state
of lack and the unconscious desire we have for it throughout our lives
turn us into split subjects: The mind is divided into two parts, namely,
the conscious and the unconscious. According to Lacan, “[t]he uncon-
scious is a process of signification that is beyond our control; it is the
language that speaks through us rather than the language we speak”
(Homer, 2005, p. 44). Then, he goes on to define the unconscious as
the discourse of the Other. In Lacan’s theory, the Other (with a capital
“O”) equals language or the Symbolic order, “a radical otherness” that
“can never be fully assimilated to the subject” and, “nevertheless, forms
the core of our unconscious” (Homer, 2005, p. 44). What the Symbolic
order reveals to the subject is the limit of one’s universe because the
desires of others are expressed through language and—in order to
express our own desire—we, too, have to resort to the same language.
Therefore, our being in the Symbolic order is dependent upon lan-
guage and we are forever locked within “a circuit of discourse”
(Homer, 2005, p. 44), namely, the discourse of the Other. In this way,
“the subject is hollowed out by language”: It is formulated by the the
sign in a negative manner, i.e., not by what the sign “actively marks
on the subject” but by “what it takes from it” (MacCannell, 2006, p.
200). Thus, language, the Other or the Symbolic, “divides a subject
from its ‘being,’ replacing the body ruled by natural law with one that
complies only with the laws of language” (MacCannell, 2006, p. 199).
The Lacanian concept of alienation should also be understood in this
context. That is to say, as soon as the child enters the realm of lan-
guage, they are severed once and for all from the illusory sense of
unity which they experienced (or seemed to experience) in the
Imaginary order. It is at this precise moment that the child, according
to Fink (1995), “can be understood to in some sense choose to submit
to language, to agree to express his or her needs through the distort-
ing medium or straightjacket of language, and to allow him or herself
to be represented by words” (p. 50). In other words, in the pursuit of
desire, the child is “alienated,” caught in the vicious circle of the sys-
tem of signification. Signifiers become the sole media through which
the child could express their desire and seek, once again, the blissful
experience of the Imaginary. However, since language is marked by
an ontological incompleteness, the quest is doomed to failure. The fall
into the realm of language pushes the ultimate object of desire (i.e.,
the primal imaginary unity with the mother) forever beyond the child’s
reach. This way, Lacan reformulates the Freudian concept of
“castration.” For him, it is language (as a system which is governed by

the paternal authority in patriarchal societies) which prevents the child
from re-attaining the pre-verbal sense of completeness and, thereby,
castrates them.
The next order for Lacan is the Real order, one of the most complicated
concepts in his thought. What is important here is that the Real order is
not the third order based on a linear or chronological progress. In other
words, the Real does not begin the moment the Symbolic ends. It is not a
material object and should not be confused with “reality,” either. In a
sense, it is quite the opposite of reality. The Real order is the order that is
beyond any signifying/symbolic/interpretive/linguistic system. Lacan
associates it with the concept of “trauma”: a psychic event, the result of
“the confrontation between an external stimulus and the subject’s inability
to understand and master [the consequent] excitations” (Homer, 2005, p.
83). Therefore, this state is repressed and later may return to the conscious
due to different causes, in which case it may result in a rupture or gap in
the Symbolic. As was suggested earlier, desire is always the desire of
something that is missing (the Other) and, thus, involves a constant search
for the missing object. In order to fill this gap, as subjects of language, we
replace some specific, temporary object—the “objet petit a” (sometimes
referred to by Lacan as “das Ding” or “the Thing”). In other words, since
the desire for a reunion with the mother is unconscious, we may encoun-
ter certain objects that remind us of this repressed general desire that can-
not be satisfied. Lacan categorizes all such objects under objet petit a (objet
autre, French for “other object” of desire). For example, we may yearn for
money, social status, political power, knowledge, etc. in everyday life.
These objects indeed function as symbols of our general lack. That is
to say,
in every Symbol there remains a (psychic) kernel of the Real; in every

Desire lies a fragment of Drive; and in every social Symbolic Order lies a
nucleus that contains some Thing, some event, some deed, some group,
that can never be symbolically recognized or assimilated (MacCannell,
2006, p. 201).
Lacan argues that the concept of objet petit a (or, simply, objet a) is
linked with that of the Real: objet a is not the exact object we have
lost; on the other hand, we do not know what exactly the “real” object
is. Thus, we only know that there is something we lack that we

cannot put into words (or any other symbolic system of signification,
representation, or interpretation). Consequently, the objet petit a is
“the left-over of the Real” (Homer, 2005, p. 88)—a reality that we,
through fantasy, utilize to fill the gap or rupture forged by the Real in
our subjectivity. This is another way to say that the objet a refers to
those “half-real, half-hallucinated objects of longing” that fill “the
‘emptiness’ of the desiring subject (produced by the signifier’s repres-
sion of the Real)” (MacCannell, 2006, p. 201). In everyday life, we may
be placed in certain situations in which we discover that the reality
hidden beneath the ideologies created by society is beyond our under-
standing and control (Tyson, 2015, p. 31). This is the moment we get
close to the Real order.
“Love” is another significant concept in Lacan’s psychoanalytic the-
ory that has received little attention from Lacan scholars and Lacanian
literary critics. Perhaps, one reason is that, as is the case with almost
all other concepts in his thought, Lacan never treats the question of
love systematically and concentratively in his oeuvre. To see how he
constantly keeps redefining his own concepts throughout his various
seminars and essays, one can take a look, for instance, at the entry
“love” in D. Evans’s (1996) helpful dictionary of Lacanian terminology.
Through offering an analysis of the concept of love in William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and its connection with the Lacanian
notions of desire, subjectivity, fantasy, the Real, and death (drive), the
present essay seeks to shed light on this key concept in Lacanian psy-
choanalysis, thereby delineating Lacan’s contribution to the philosophy
of love.
Theoretical vs. Clinical Psychoanalysis?
There has often been an objection to the sufficiency/efficiency of lit-

erature in providing psychoanalysis with authentic and dependable
knowledge about human psyche, to the extent that Lacan himself has
been charged time and again with relying too much on fictional narra-
tives rather than on veritable clinical case studies. This is true as much
as it concerns the existential scarcity of clinical cases in Lacan’s oeuvre.
As J-M. Rabat e (2001) remarks, “apart from one striking exception—a
remarkable interview with a psychiatric patient who, among other
delusions, believed he was the reincarnation of Nietzsche and Antonin
Artaud—there exists almost nothing in English that testifies to [Lacan’s]

clinical practice” (p. 2). However, such objections betray a technical
misunderstanding of the role of literature in psychoanalytic under-
standing. That is to say, from Lacan’s point of view and those of like-
minded psychoanalysts, literary texts provide an aperture whence light
is shed on the darkest and remotest parts of the human mind, giving
the analyst a suitable tool to carve formless thoughts into solid hypoth-
eses. In other words, Lacan rebuffed the claim that only the so-called
“real” cases, and not works of imagination, could be drawn on in
forming psychoanalytic theories, as he saw literature as a venue where
one’s “unconscious desires” stage, in disguise a harmonious play for
the entire world to see, unlike “real” cases where the analysand is
likely reluctant or unable to provide the analyst with the key to their
psychic treasure.
Thus, the question of the nonscientific, and as such—to some—
unreliable, nature of reading literary texts for the purpose of the psy-
choanalytic technique is, for Lacan, ontologically misguided. As Rabate
(2001) puts it,
Lacan’s whole effort is aimed at undermining the naivete of [such a]

question. Not only does he show how much Freud and other
practitioners rely on literary effects in many case studies, with all the
subsequent narratological problems they entail, but he also follows
Freud in the suggestion that there is not opposition but complementarity
between the literary domain and ‘real cases’ (p. 2).
Differently put, Lacan perceived fictional characters as “real” subjects

peopling the world of the author’s mind, having their roots in the
depth of the unconscious, and waiting for their words and deeds to be
analyzed by the acute reader. This way, the least a psychoanalytical
reading of literature can do is to usher the reader, through the involu-
tions of the imagination, to the author’s unconscious mind.
A brief glance at Lacan’s oeuvre proves the undeniable place of lit-
erature in his thought. For instance, he “suggested that we can catch a
glimpse” of the failure of the three dimensions of Imaginary, Symbolic,
and Real “to work together in the manner determined by the Oedipus
complex by looking at James Joyce’s character Stephen Daedalus”
(Fink, 2007, p. 263). Sophocles, St. Augustine, Shakespeare, Marquis
de Sade, Edgar Allan Poe, Marguerite Duras, Paul Claudel, and Jean
Genet are only a few of the writers one frequently encounters in the
body of Lacan’s seminars and writings. For example, since “love” is an
abstract idea, just like other abstract emotions or states of mind,
exploring the way it is represented concretely in literary works will
illustrate the mechanism behind it. That is what Freud, Carl G. Jung,
zek have done in their own works.
Ernest Jones, Lacan, and Slavoj Zi
Indeed, many of the terms now established in the theory and practice
of psychoanalysis—e.g., the Oedipal and Electra complexes, narcis-
sism, the sublime, the letter, and symptom—were ones inferred from
works of literature by Freud, Lacan, and their followers.
Romeo and Juliet and Psychoanalysis: A Review
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays and has
yielded various interpretations ever since its publication in 1595
(Shakespeare, 1564–1616/2000). According to D. T. Grunes and J. M.
Grunes (Grunes & Grunes, 2014), it was “through Romeo and Juliet
[that] Shakespeare became a true tragedian,” because its universal
theme—together with its cathartic effect on the theatrical audience as
well as the reader—raises it to the level of a successful tragic work
based on the Aristotelian definition of tragedy (p. 82). What makes the
story of these star-crossed lovers more tragic is the final scene of the
play, where a primal “optical illusion” (each seeing the other dead
while in truth both being alive) leads Romeo and Juliet to end their
lives by committing suicide. N. N. Holland (2008) is quick to point out
the psychoanalytic implications of this ending:
Just as the opening scenes of the play bring together the act of love and
the act of hate, sex, and fighting, the closing scenes of the play bring
together the place of birth and the place of death. These equations, love
and hate, sex and dying, marriage and funeral, womb and tomb, such
thoughts, modern psychologists are quick to tell us, occupy some of the
oldest and deepest levels of the human mind (p. 194).
The lovers end up where they started; that is, their dark tomb, the
monument of the Capulets, resembles the mother’s womb. Although
Holland does not elaborate any more on this issue, one could say in
Lacanian terms that this is suggestive of the lovers’ failure in uniting
with each other under the Law of the Father3 and their consequent
return through death, the Real, to the pre-Symbolic order of joy and
unity. That is why “Romeo and Juliet’s choice of each other as love
objects is simultaneously the choice of their mutual deaths”
(Armstrong, 2001, p. 193). The play has been regarded as
“Shakespeare’s first proper tragedy of love” (Bates, 2004, 183), to
which it might be added that perhaps it is also his most effective and
revealing one. All in all, one can concur with J. Kristeva (1987) in that
“young people throughout the entire world, whatever their race, reli-
gion, or social status, identify with the adolescents of Verona who mis-
took love for death” and had to “spend less time loving each other
than getting ready to die” (p. 210).
Since the issues of desire, sex, love, transgression, and death as well
as the psychical processes and developments of the major characters
are central to this play, Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism seems the
most appropriate approach to disentangle its thematic complexity.
Because of the subjects and themes (i.e., desire, love, transgression,
and death), this play is perhaps the best illustration of the Lacanian
theory of love and desire. However, to date no such reading of the
play has been offered.
The only post-Freudian psychoanalytic exploration of the play that
can be taken seriously is the one provided by Kristeva (1987), how-
ever we do not consider this a Lacanian reading. Kristeva argues that
the infant’s relation to the mother is ambivalent, an oscillation between
love and hate or pleasure and abjection that later resurfaces as linguis-
tic differentiation and identification, the elemental processes of the
individual’s subjectivity and desire in the Symbolic order. Then, she
states that this ambivalence is illustrated by Shakespeare in Romeo and
Juliet as, in this text, hatred is intrinsic rather than extrinsic to the love
relation between the two central characters. In other words, for
3
In patriarchal and phallocentric societies, language (i.e., the Symbolic order) is not a
neutral system, free from gender-based biases. In fact, such a society revolves around
masculine values and denounces feminine features as negative and even evil. In other
words, from a Lacanian perspective, language is the embodiment of paternal authority, a
system which is under the aegis of what Lacan terms nom-du-p e re, or the Name of the
Father. Of course, the pun on the French word nom (pronounced like the French word
non, meaning “no”) also points to the prohibitory nature of the paternal function in
separating the child from the dyadic relationship with the mother. Thus, the term has
also been translated as the No! of the Father or, in a legal and punitive sense, as the Law
of the Father (Fink, 1995). From a Freudian point of view, the final moment of the
Oedipal scenario, as mentioned for example in Freud (2001), consists in the constitution
of Law in human society.
Kristeva (1987), the play is indicative of love and hatred as not mutu-
ally exclusive categories but sharing a common origin and a simultan-
eous operation; that is, in the course of the events, “[u]nder the guise
of [loving] sex,” in fact, “it is hatred that prevails” (p. 220). Both lovers
demonstrate this ambivalent feeling in the play, and of these two char-
acters Juliet appears to be the one who is more conscious of this emo-
tional ambivalence as reveals her plain-spoken ‘apostrophe’4 to night
(3.2.19-24). Accordingly, by Kristeva’s account (1987), love and hatred
(or life and death) are supplementary categories and hate is situated
deep within love itself. The idea put forth by Kristeva can be general-
ized to the essence of the whole of human civilization—exactly what
Freud (Freud, 1930/1962) had previously done with his dictum that
“the evolution of civilization [ … ] present[s] the struggle between Eros
and Death [¼ Thanatos], between the instinct of life and the instinct of
destruction, as it works itself out in the human species” (p. 69). Not
unlike Kristeva (1987), Holland (2008) also accentuates the role of hate
as parallel to love in this play, “naturally enough, in a way, for the god
of love [¼ Eros/Cupid] is an archer and he shoots fatal arrows” (p.
186). For this reason, Holland (2008) calls the play “a tragedy of young
love and old hate, a tragedy of ‘the fatal loins’ [a phrase used in the
prologue of the play, l. 5]” (p. 187). Kristeva (1987) goes on to suggest
that Romeo and Juliet represents the fantasy of transgressive love and
its paradoxical quality: the love between Romeo and Juliet can live on
only by being outside the law (of the Father or the domain of the
Symbolic), but then it is doomed to death because it is transgressive,
i.e., outside the Law.
Kristeva elsewhere (2007) discusses the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
with special reference to the notion of adolescence. There, she holds
that all adolescent acts are idealistic and necessarily involve defiance
and secrecy. Similarly, the reciprocal idealization of Romeo and Juliet
as two adolescents takes the form of rejecting parental authority. It is
their defiance of the antagonistic Montague and Capulet families that,
according to Kristeva (2007), ignites their love for each other.
However, “the adolescent believes that his or her pleasure is legitimate
and justified,” while “the adolescent’s latent polymorphous perversity
4
“Apostrophe,” as a rhetorical or poetic technique, refers to the act of addressing an
inanimate object or a dead/absent person as if they were alive and present
(Cuddon, 2013).
remaining from childhood” counteracts their sense of legitimacy and

leads to the fatality of their pleasure (Kristeva, 2007, p. 723). When
reading the play, perhaps the first thing that comes to our mind
regarding the love relation between Romeo and Juliet is whether or
not this is a premature love, that is, whether at that time they were
considered adults or not. At the time the events of the play occur,
Juliet must be almost thirteen years old, yet she is not considered a
child. Romeo perhaps is fifteen or sixteen years old, but he is a not-
able swordsman, able to fight and win (and, of course, kill) older
men. Moreover, certainly his relationship with Juliet is not his first sex-
ual experience (i.e., at least he is not a virgin, if Juliet is). Actually, one
can find enough textual evidence to argue that their love is not prema-
ture or adolescent, counter to Kristeva’s position. Apparently, marriage
at this age, or even at twelve, was common in society at that time. For
instance, the Nurse swears “by my maidenhead at twelve year old”
(1.3.2) when she wants to insist that she is telling the truth. More to
the point, Capulet’s Wife thus warns Juliet: “think of marriage now;
younger than you,/Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,/Are made already
mothers, by my count./I was your mother much upon these years”
(1.3.70-72). Capulet also mentions similar points about Romeo: “to say
truth, Verona brags of him/To be a virtuous and well-governed youth”
(1.5.56-68). Thus, Romeo and Juliet are at the proper age for marriage
as well as for love relations in the time and place the play is set.
Considering this, we can assume that the love between Romeo and
Juliet is not an exceptional case but is representative of all love rela-
tions between human beings in the Symbolic order and a characteristic
example of romantic love. Yet, although Kristeva was profoundly influ-
enced by Lacan and in her two essays (1987, 2007) closely analyzes
the paradox of love and hatred and the role of the Law of the Father
in Shakespeare’s play, her analysis cannot be counted Lacanian. This is
because it ignores major Lacanian concepts regarding the question of
love, including desire, the Symbolic, the Real, objet petit a, jouissance,
and death (drive).
In an essay that reads more like a review article, P. Changizi, F.
Pourgiv, and M. Latifian (2016) deem Romeo and Juliet “a tragedy of
love and language par excellence” based on what they term “post-clas-
sical and post-modern” psychoanalysis (p. 89). This study refers to an
amalgam of theories but only en passant, including D. Tennov’s
“limerence,” Kristeva’s “adolescence,” Derrida’s “contretemps,” and

Lacan’s “Symbolic,” among other concepts, with Kristeva receiving the
larger share. This adds to the essay’s vagueness on the subject of love
in the play. The authors never clarify what they mean by “post-classi-
cal” or the ambiguous phrase “post-modern psychoanalysis” and—in
discussing the above-mentioned theories, some of which may prove
mutually exclusive—they rely largely on secondary sources. Therefore,
reading the article, one encounters general, reductive remarks about
the play such as: “Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy about desire both cre-
ated and frustrated by the Other and the Symbolic Order of language.
The desiring bodies of our lovers are tragically inscribed and named
by the language and culture from which they cannot abscond, no mat-
ter how much they try to do so” (p. 97). The essay is aptly entitled
“tragedy of love,” which is consistent with Lacanian theory, yet, in the
body of the paper, there is almost no mention of the term or no
explanation about it, especially from a Lacanian perspective. The
researchers conclude their essay with another vague statement: the
play “begins with comedy but transitions and ends in tragedy because
the particular ideological framework of the time dictates la tragedie du
de sir” (p. 102). This is the only point where the authors refer to the
term deployed in the paper’s title (“Tragedy of Love and Language”).
As it appears here, not only is love confused with desire, but the
account given of desire is not accurate and lucid enough. Overall, this
review is nothing more than a summary of the analysis given by
Kristeva, which we have already discussed. All considered, in this
essay, we try to fill the gaps within the related literature and offer, for
the first time, a close psychoanalytic reading of the play according to
Lacanian theory, explaining why exactly Romeo and Juliet’s love is a
representative instance of the “tragedy of love.”
Love in Lacan/Romeo and Juliet in Love
The phrase “tragedy of love,” as C. Bates (2004) notes, seems oxymor-

onic, since love is by definition “the great force that unites and binds”
(p. 182), thereby suggesting happiness and fulfillment. Nevertheless,
contrary to this conventional conception, the Lacanian notion of
“desire” (together with such related terms as “love”) has its roots in the
Platonic concept of “lack”: a person desires what they lack or in which
they are deficient, and what is lacking is something that has been
taken away: That is, what is lacking and, consequently, desired is

something that once belonged to the person (Plato, 1997a, 222a). This
is another way of saying that desire is always the desire of something
lacking and, if one desires something that they already have, the per-
son—in fact—desires to have that thing for ever (Plato, 1997b, 200b).
What Lacan adds to this negative notion of desire is precisely the tragic
aspect, for the Lacanian subject—as we shall see in the case of Romeo
and Juliet—is never capable of fulfilling their desire. Therefore, the
phrase “tragedy of love,” as conceived of by Lacan, is in no way
contradictory. This is our focus in this essay.5
The romantic relationship we observe in Romeo and Juliet can be
considered as an ill-fated love, which ultimately leads the lovers to an
inevitable death (see White, 2001, pp. 13–14 & Watts, 2000a, pp.
16–20). This form of love is sometimes sacred and transcendental, but
at other times seems to be carnal and profane or even perverse. It is
the nature of romantic love, the archetype of which is the medieval
romance of Tristan and Iseult (Isolde). The term “romantic love”
denotes those relationships between two subjects that are character-
ized by intense mutual feeling and extreme emotion. Such a love rela-
tion takes on a supernatural aspect because “almost any kind of
behavior, no matter how bizarre, seems justifiable” to the lovers
(Wagoner, 1997, p. 52). On the other hand, as is the case with Romeo
and Juliet, this kind of love also may have an erotic or sexual quality
about it. Nevertheless, what distinguishes romantic from erotic love is
the fact that the former “in its purest essence is selfless [ … and] lacks
the calculating, self-regarding element that is characteristic of” the latter
(Wagoner, 1997, pp. 57–58). All in all, what is significant about roman-
tic love is that the lovers’ ultimate union is impossible in this life, and
it is only in their death that the romantic couple are united, when all
the worldly obstacles are surmounted. Yet, as long as they live and
love, “they simply ignore the impracticality, irrationality, and [/or]
immorality of their relationship” (Wagoner, 1997, pp. 54–55). This
close relationship between love (or desire, in broad terms) and death
makes the idea of romantic love a proper subject for psychoanalysis.
5
The Poststructuralist French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and F
elix Guattari severely criticize
the Freudo-Lacanian notion of desire on the grounds that it is defined negatively (as
“lack”) and reduced to the Oedipal complex and the social institution of nuclear family
(see Ghaffary, 2019, 2020).
Up to the first scene of the play’s third act, where Mercutio is mur-
dered by Tybalt, the general atmosphere of the play is comic, alive
with jokes and comic wordplay, as well as pleasant romantic moments
and speeches. That is, when reading the first two acts, the reader does
not feel yet that they are about to witness a tragedy. However, from
the moment of Mercutio’s death, the play undergoes an abrupt shift
from comedy to tragedy. As other deaths follow, the situation becomes
fully violent and dark, and the play assumes a tragic aspect. The char-
acters and, consequently, the reader become aware of the limits of the
Symbolic reality that organizes their minds and lives. They are subject
to the Symbolic order, and their subjectivities are constituted through
“the operation of ideology,” that is to say, through the system of values
imposed on them by the agency of the Superego. What makes them
aware of their condition is the “Reality” of death and the fact that their
desire can never be truly satisfied: They realize the sham of ideology
and get close to the Real. As mentioned above, in everyday life, there
are times when we, as humans, must face situations in which we dis-
cover that the reality underlying social ideologies is beyond our
understanding:
the Real is that experience we have [ … ] when we feel that there is no

purpose or meaning to life, when we suspect that the religious and
secular values governing society are hoaxes or mistakes or the results of
chance [, … ] when we realize that it is ideology [ … ] that has made the
world as we know it. [ … ] The Real is something we can know nothing
about, except to have the anxious feeling from time to time that it’s
there. That’s why Lacan calls this [ … ] the trauma of the Real (Tyson,
2015, p. 31).
Romeo and Juliet differs from other Shakespearean tragedies in that its
catastrophe is caused by circumstances and not by any internal conflict
in its protagonist(s). This is another proof of the forces of the
Symbolic in this universe of discourse: The subject is not a conscious
unified individual in total control of themselves, but a spilt subject
formed and governed by a language-like unconscious, the discourse of
the Other. As Lacan (2006a) states, “the subject, while he may appear
to be the slave of language, is still more the slave of a discourse in the
universal movement of which his place is already inscribed at his birth,
if only in the form of his proper name” (p. 414). Thus, it is society or
the Law of the Father that decides the life and fate of its subjects.
In Lacan’s works, one repeatedly confronts various roundabout
ways of articulation, puns, wordplay, metaphors, jokes, ironies, and
contradictions. This manner of writing is chosen by Lacan for its effects
upon the reader. In fact, as S. Homer (2005) remarks, Lacan “tries to
articulate through the structure of language something that remains
beyond language itself,” namely, the unconscious (desire) (p. 12): the
subject of psychoanalysis, as in Lacan’s writings, is the unconscious, so
psychoanalysis talks about something that is always beyond itself.
Lacan’s style forces the reader to face the limits of meaning and under-
standing, i.e., the limits of the Symbolic system, which is not able to
represent the unconscious in symbols (Homer, 2005, p. 12) (Compare
this to Freud [1905/1990] who claimed that our unconscious desires
can resurface via several channels, one of which is joke). Equally, in
Rome and Juliet, in numerous instances, puns, jokes, and wordplay
are employed, particularly by the Nurse and Mercutio and often with
sexual connotations. On the surface, these discursive devices provide
comic relief in times of tension but—beneath the surface—they depict
the effect of the mechanism of the unconscious upon the subject.
Indeed, they mark the limits of the universe of discourse for the indi-
vidual, suggesting that there is always something that escapes any kind
of symbolization or representation, something inaccessible that is
beyond the structure of language. This thing is the remnant of the Real
in the Symbolic: “I put forward the quasi-algebraic formula, which has
the air of being almost too transparent, too concrete-the real, or what
is perceived as such, is what resists symbolization absolutely” (Lacan,
1991, p. 66). For Lacan (2006c), “the real [ … ] is the domain of that
which subsists outside of symbolization” (p. 324). The Nurse and
Mercutio are the most self-conscious characters in this regard, as they
know they desire something that is not reducible to symbols and lan-
guage and that, as long as they live, understand, and represent within
the restrictions of the Symbolic order, they will not be able to appreci-
ate what it is that they desire. The other characters, most prominently
Romeo, reach such awareness only after they encounter the Reality of
death, the only thing that can terminate the domination of the
Symbolic over the subject, although it is, in and of itself, inaccessible
to them.
Love and Fantasy
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the notion of love is connected with that

of “fantasy.” Lacan’s definition of “love” as “a specular mirage” which
is “essentially deception” is directly linked by him to the objet a, that
is, to the “paradoxical, unique, specified object” that the subject
believes, albeit mistakenly, can fill out their lack (Lacan, 1998, p. 268).
Then, the lover’s message to the beloved, as Lacan puts it, will be
something like this: “I love you, but, because inexplicably I love in
you something more than you—the objet petit a—I mutilate you”
(Lacan, 1998, p. 268). Moreover, Lacan (2006b) unequivocally defines
“fantasy” as the castrated subject’s relation to the lost object of desire
(objet a):
Fantasy is defined by the most general form it receives in an algebra I

have constructed for this purpose-namely, the formula ($䉫a), in which
the lozenge 䉫 is to be read as “desire for,” being read right to left in the
same way, introducing an identity that is based on an absolute non-
reciprocity. [ … ] This [¼ fantasy] only occurs when its apparent agent
freezes with the rigidity of an object, in view of having his division as a
subject entirely reflected in the Other (p. 653).6
Let us try to explain what he is saying: The split subject uses fantasy as
a means of self-delusion: Through fantasy, where unconscious desires
are revealed, the subject imagines they are one with the Other, rather
than divided. Thus, the subject creates the illusion for themself that the
Other is accessible and, moreover, the subject has already found it.
Hence, fantasy “is an imagined scene in which the subject is a protag-
onist and always represents the fulfillment of a wish” (Homer, 2005, p.
85). Put in other words, in fantasy, there is no sense of lack or loss in
the subject, and the Real is not regarded as beyond the subject’s reach,
6
There are different ways of reading the Lacanian formula of fantasy. The one which is
more suitable to the present context is the one which reads as follows: “The barred, split
subject desires for the object of desire.” In this formula, Lacan uses $as an equivalent to
his concept of the subject as barred and split. That is to say, the subject is no longer
considered as “full” and “complete,” since its entrance into the Symbolic order introduces
a lack into its very nature, thereby rendering it to a desire for the lost object of desire. In
order to signify this object, Lacan uses the letter a which is the first letter of the French
word “autre” meaning “the other.” The other is supposed to possess what the subject
lacks, to own the object which the subject believes will fill in the empty place and will
zek, 2008b).
bring to an end the endless search for desire (Zi
so “[t]hrough fantasy we construct our social reality as an answer to

the intractability of the real” (Homer, 2005, p. 90). This reality is a
mere illusion, yet it is its function for the subject that matters.
In Romeo and Juliet, there is a significant passage on dreams and
dreaming that is quite close to the Lacanian view on fantasy:
ROMEO: I dreamt a dream tonight.

MERCUTIO: And so did I.
ROMEO: Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO: That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.
MERCUTIO: O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub;
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers:
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider-web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film;
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid.
And in this state she gallops night by night:
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream [ … ]. (1.4.49-74)
This dialogue occurs before Romeo falls for Juliet at Capulet’s party.
In his comment on dream, which here can be considered as equal to
the more general concept of fantasy,7 equates dream with lie

(“dreamers often lie [consciously]”) and, thereby, highlights the self-
delusional nature of all fantasy. This holds true for all walks of peo-
ple in society and not a specific group of them (e.g., lovers, courtiers,
lawyers, ladies, and so forth). Often, it is supposed that fantasy is a
way to escape reality. When subjects become tired of the tedious and
monotonous events of life and of the constraining rules and regula-
tions of the social space, they indulge themselves in the world of fan-
tasies. Such fantasies help them see their failures and dissatisfaction
occurring from chance events that plague them every now and then,
not of an ontological lack that is a necessary consequence of living
as a subject in society. In these dreams, the subjects see themselves
in possession of all they desire, everything that in their real lives they
have always sought but have never been able to gain. The fantasy
scenario is a surrogate for the never-ending failure in attaining the
object of desire. However, in spite of all this, fantasy is not an escape
from “reality,” rather—according to Lacan—an escape into it. The
symbolic reality is constituted around a fundamental deadlock, on
the verge of an ontological void, which Lacan calls “the Real,” that is,
“the unfathomable X which, although nowhere present, curves/dis-
torts any space of symbolic representation and condemns it to ultim-
zek, 2008a, p. 124). There is a fundamental lack in the
ate failure” (Zi
Other that forever hinders its completion and, in order to conceal
this fundamental lack—this “abyss of the Real”—fantasy is at work. In
other words, the Symbolic order is an attempt to shield the subject
from encountering this empty place, to create for the subject the illu-
sion of completeness that they could likely achieve in the future.
Nevertheless, no matter how efficient this Symbolic order is, it will
necessarily be pushed to its limits somewhere. It will finally fail to
sustain this illusion due to the intrusion of some trauma, which will
shatter the social reality into pieces. It is here that fantasy comes to
the rescue: “[t]he function of the social-ideological fantasy is to mask
the trauma that society itself is constituted by this inherent lack”
7
It should be noted here that the Lacanian definition of “fantasy” differs starkly from the
general signification of the term. In common parlance, fantasy is usually a dreamlike
illusion which the subject creates in order to find a shelter from the harshness of the
everyday reality. However, from a Lacanian point of view, fantasy is a construction
which supports the Symbolic reality itself by masking the ontological gap which is in the
midst of this reality, thereby protecting us from the traumatic encounter of the Real.
(Homer, 2005, p. 113). Therefore, fantasy gives some consistency,

albeit illusory, to the otherwise inconsistent reality; that is, in the
opposition between reality and the Real, fantasy is “on the side of
zek, 2008b, p. 44).
reality” (Zi
Mercutio states that love, too, is a form of fantasy because, through it,
the subject attempts to construct a reality by which they can temporarily
forget their separateness from the Real. Mercutio continues his denunci-
ation of fantasy until Romeo interrupts him, “Peace, peace, Mercutio,
peace!/Thou talkst of nothing” (1.4.97-97, emphasis added), and
receives this reply: “True, I talk of dreams;/Which are the children of an
idle brain,/Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,/Which is as thin of sub-
stance as the air/And more inconstant than the wind” (1.4.96-100,
emphasis added). Here, Mercutio goes further and this time describes
dream (¼ fantasy) as nothing but a vain, inconstant substance, stressing
the point that dreams are mere illusions. Thus, love is considered by
Mercutio (and by Shakespeare himself, if one views Mercutio as the
spokesman or raisonneur of the play) to have a fantastical nature and
self-delusional function. Romeo redoubles the same position when talk-
ing to Juliet in the famous balcony scene in act two: “With love’s light
wings did I o’erperch these walls;/For stony limits cannot hold love out,/
And what love can do, that dares love attempt” (2.2.66-69). The “walls”
Romeo here refers to could be taken as symbols of the obstacles on the
way of desire; so, “overperching” or flying over these walls means going
beyond the obstacle of the Symbolic or language to reach the Desired,
which is merely Romeo’s illusory fantasy.
This view on love is underlined at several other points in the play.
An obvious case is Romeo’s and Mercutio’s brief discussion about love
in the first act before Romeo meets Juliet:
ROMEO: Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
MERCUTIO: If love be rough with you, be rough with love:
Prick [¼ a sexual pun, which means by sexually pricking the beloved
you will retaliate against] love for pricking, and you beat love down.
(1.4.25-28; for the pun, see Watts, 2000b, p. 130)
First of all, such discussions on these characters’ part indicate how

they—in particular Romeo—are conscious of love, its effect upon
them, and their need for loving and being loved (certain other instan-
ces of this love consciousness can be observed in the very first act of
the play, for example, in Romeo’s conversation with Benvolio in Scene
One). In this passage, it is the insatiability of desire through love that
is underlined: Although love may appear tender to the lovers, sooner
or later they will realize that it cannot satisfy the desire inherent within
them. This realization of love’s roughness “pricks” them “like thorn.”
Accordingly, for them love is the subject’s attempt to gain access to the
objet a, the leftover of the Real. It covers the hole or rupture at
the heart of the Symbolic, making the individual aware of the limits of
the Structure that constructs their subjectivity. That is, it makes the sub-
ject conscious of the fact that ultimately desire cannot be gratified
since no sooner has the subject been united with their beloved than
the person realizes there is always something more to be desired. That
is why we, like Romeo in the first act of the play, move to another
beloved when we find out that the previous one is not capable of ful-
filling our desire. B. Fink (2007) neatly summarizes this illusory nature
of love:
The most passionate forms of love generally involve a total

misrecognition of the otherness of the other person and a massive
projection of all kinds of desirable qualities onto someone about whom
one knows very little. The object of such massive projection sometimes
even protests that she or he wants to be loved for her- or himself, not
put on a pedestal or idealized. In many cases, people begin to fall out
of love precisely when the other’s actual qualities begin to come into
view and the perfection that had been projected by the lover onto the
beloved proves to be illusory (p. 133).
However, the subject cannot know what exactly this “something more”
that they desire is, as it does not fit into any Symbolic framework or,
from a more radical point of view, as no object of desire (the Phallus)
ever existed in the first place. Thus, in a sense, love as a form of fan-
tasy appears to be at once the gap within the Symbolic and that which
covers this gap. That is to say, the subject feels the emptiness which
marks the core of its being and desperately seeks the object to fill this
emptiness. In the search for this supposedly lost object of desire, love
comes into being. Love creates a fantasy scenario whereby the
subject can finally come into possession of the object, when the lack is
removed and the empty place is filled with that special “thing”
which the beloved is supposed to possess. However, one should not
forget that this empty place has an ontological status, i.e., it is constitu-
tive of the person as such. In other words, the lack does not follow a
primal moment of completeness. Fantasy, in the first place, creates the
illusion that the subject has once been in possession of the object of
desire, “losing” it only afterward. Then, it compels the subject to look
for this “chimerical” object in the Symbolic reality. In a sense, the pre-
supposition of the “lost” object and its “existence” in the Symbolic real-
ity are both due to the work of fantasy. Below, we return to
this subject.
Love, Desire, and Objet a
Toward the end of the play’s first act, in the last scene, Romeo,
who is desperately in love with a girl named Rosaline, attends
Capulet’s party with his companions. During the party, Romeo
encounters Juliet for the first time while dancing, and this is the
moment when he realizes Rosaline is not “the one,” an object (obejt
a) that can fulfill his desire. Thus, he falls in love with Juliet, trying
to convince himself that Juliet is the person capable of filling the
gap in him. Although it is Romeo who makes the first move, it
does not take long before Juliet, too, comes on the scene of this
love fantasy. The following passage, which depicts the moment they
fall in love as well as their first kiss, is a classic example of love at
first sight or romantic love par excellence:
ROMEO (Taking Juliet’s hand): If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentler sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:
They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take. (He kisses her.)
Thus from my lips by yours my sin is purged.
JULIET: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again. (He kisses her.)
JULIET: You kiss by th’ book. (1.5.90-109; p. 54)
This scene indeed portrays Romeo’s initiation of a journey to desire,

one that by the third act of the play we recognize as doomed. What is
interesting is that the word “Romeo” originally means “pilgrim” or
“palmer” (Watts, 2000b, p. 131): Just as the subject is in constant pur-
suit of the Other to satisfy their desire, so the lover is on an endless
pilgrimage to the Beloved. Yet, both fail to unite with the object of
their desire since, as soon as they reach the objet a, they discover that
it is not what they have been seeking (the Real) and that they must
search for something else, which ultimately cannot be found.
Nevertheless, the subject needs the illusive fantasy of love so as to
cover the hole within oneself even if momentarily; thus, the subject
does not abandon their search for the Beloved. The main question that
arises here is, as the object of love, what is it about Juliet that triggers
Romeo’s love? In other words, what happens to Romeo at this moment
that makes him fall for Juliet? Of course, this is the case with all “love
at first sight.” One can reformulate the question as follows: what qual-
ity or characteristic does the beloved possess that causes the lover to
love the other? This is the fundamental question in the philosophy of
love to which, like other big questions, there still is no definite answer.
From classical times, however, different philosophers have posited
various thoughts on the subject. Shakespeare’s seems to be more in
line with that of Lacan, which is in turn similar, if not identical, to
Jacques Derrida’s ideas (discussed below).
Shakespeare deals with this question at the point where Friar
Lawrence chides Romeo for giving up his love for Rosaline and direct-
ing it instead toward Juliet: “Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so
dear,/So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies/Not truly in their
hearts, but in their eyes” (2.3.66-68). It was noted above that Rosaline
functions as an objet a for Romeo, who then learns that she cannot sat-
isfy his desire. In consequence, he leaves her for another object,
namely Juliet. It is in Romeo’s reply to Friar Lawrence that the question
of love is addressed: “I pray thee chide not. She whom I love now/
Doth grace for grace and love for love allow:/The other did not so”
(2.3.86-88). Romeo holds that Juliet, contrary to Rosaline and other
girls, responds to his grace with grace and returns his love with her
own (their love is mutual), and that is the reason why Romeo loves
her. Yet, in truth, Juliet is just another objet a for Romeo. J-A. Miller
(2014) maintains that love is always mutual, i.e., the beloved (“object”
of love), too, plays an active part in the relation. The lover loves the
beloved precisely because there is something in the beloved that
causes the lover to love them: “the love I have for you is the return
effect of the cause of love that you are for me. [ … ] My love for you
isn’t just my affair, it’s yours too” (para. 16). The cause of this love
(the trait[s] in the beloved) “totally escapes the neurosciences, because
it’s unique to each person, it’s down to their singular, intimate history”
(Miller, 2014, para. 18). What is suggested in the play is that when we
love someone, we do not love them for themselves but for a quality or
property they possess. This is the same position adopted by Derrida.8
He believes that this is a matter of “who” and “what”:
Is love the love of someone or the love of something? [ … ] Do I love

somebody for the absolute singularity of who they are? [ … ] Or, do I
love their qualities, beauty or intelligence [or other qualities]? Does one
love someone or does one love something about someone? (Dick &
Kofman, 2002, 00:370 :4900 -00:380 :2800 )
The same applies to the death of love: apparently, “one stops loving
another not because of who they are but because they are such and
such” (Dick & Kofman, 2002, 00:390 :2000 -00:390 :2700 ). To Derrida, this
question about love is parallel to the question of “Being,” which is the
basic question of philosophy: “Is ‘Being’ someone or something [sub-
ject or object]?” (ibid., 2002, 00:400 :0000 -00:400 :0300 ).
8
Derrida speaks on his thoughts about love in the Dick & Kofman (2002) documentary.
Thus, from a Derridean viewpoint, when I fall in love, I know there

is something special about my beloved, but I cannot express or articu-
late it because it is elusive or intangible; yet the reason for my love is
exactly this “something” about the beloved. This is what Lacan means
by the objet a, i.e., the object-cause of one’s desire that evades any
symbolization or representation. Thus, “[t]he objet a is at once the
void, the gap, the lack around which the symbolic order is structured
and that which comes to mask or cover over that lack,” and, as was
mentioned before, our “impossible” relation to the objet a is estab-
lished through fantasy (Homer, 2005, p. 88). Romeo, like all other lov-
ers, does know that his beloved (Juliet and, before her, Rosaline) has
a special quality that triggers his love, but he is not able to say what
exactly it is—that which is connected to the Real is not symbolizable:
“It is my lady, O it is my love;/O that she knew she were!/She speaks,
yet she says nothing” (2.2.10-12). He only discerns, for instance, that
Juliet returns his love reciprocally, although what it means is not clear.
This relation acquires meaning for Romeo only as a result of the oper-
ation of his fantasy.
We love when we take the objet a as a real object that can be
attained. In this way, love is associated only with the covering-up
function of the objet a. Then, what is the consequence of love for the
subject? Does it function only positively? In fact, when you love, you
idealize: This is the difference between love and desire. When you
idealize the object of love, you believe it completes you. Lacan calls it
a delusion, yet it works. In desire, you move from one object to
another in search of the lost object; in love, the idealized object (or
das Ding) becomes the desired object not a lost object. Desire looks
for stand-ins or replacements, whereas love seeks the real object.
When you love, you believe that you lack nothing. Therefore, you
enter the realm of illusion, and, in Lacan’s opinion, this is the danger
of love. Nevertheless, as the object of love does not gratify the sub-
ject’s desire, the experience of love leads to the awareness that desire
is not satisfiable. At this moment, the subject’s illusion of perfection is
shattered, and they once again feel a sense of split and loss.
Love, Desire, and the Phallus
A characteristic feature of the Romeo-Juliet love is the way it ren-

ders Romeo castrated: He becomes a “feminized” subject of desire:
“O sweet Juliet,/Thy beauty hath made me effeminate,/And in my

temper softened valour’s steel!” (3.1.111-13). Why is Romeo femi-
nized by love/desire? Maybe, he renounces his supposed possession
of the (imaginary) phallus in order to turn into what Juliet desires-a
phallus-lacking subject who desires Juliet because she symbolizes
the phallus for him. This leads us to the Lacanian version of such
concepts as castration and Oedipus complex. The periodical absen-
ces of the mother open the child’s eye to the fact that she is also a
lacking subject. The reductive function of the imaginary phallus in
the child’s psychic economy, and the lack which it introduces into
the whole of the image of the self, provides a clue that what the
mother is lacking is the phallus, as well. According to
Lacan (2006d),
[c]linical work shows us that the test constituted by the Other’s desire is
decisive, not in the sense that the subject learns by whether or not he
has a real phallus, but in the sense that he learns that his mother does
not have one (p. 582, emphasis added).
At this stage, the child’s main attempt will be to re-gain the mother.
The mother’s lack of phallus and her desire for it becomes the driving
force behind the child’s every move. “If the mother’s desire is for
phallus,” Lacan (2006d) continues, “the child wants to be the phallus
in order to satisfy her desire” (p. 582). Put differently, the child tries to
equate themself with the phallus, in order to fill the void that marks
the very being of the mother. This belief in the possibility of equation
with the phallus is borne along the Imaginary order, and—as long as
this belief in the Imaginary phallus is held—the child will remain
under the mother’s spell. In order for desire to come to the fore, the
phallus should move from the Imaginary into the Symbolic order This
is made possible through the introduction of the Name of the Father.
As Lacan puts it in Seminar XVII apropos of the mother’s desire and
the protective role of the phallus,
Her desire is not something you can bear easily, as if it were a matter of
indifference to you. It always leads to problems. The mother is a big
crocodile, and you find yourself in her mouth. You never know what
may set her off suddenly, making those jaws clamp down. That is the
mother’s desire.
[ … ] There is a roller, made of stone, of course, which is potentially there at

the level of the trap and which holds and jams it open. That is what we call
the phallus. It is a roller which protects you, should the jaws suddenly close.
(Cited in Fink, 1995, pp. 56–57)
Very often, the role of this protective third party is played by the
“real,” biological father, who becomes the incarnation of the “law”
which introduces, once and for all, a lack into the world of the child.
However, for Lacan, what counts in the Oedipal stage is not the pres-
ence, or absence, of a real father but a “name”: the father to whose
law the child should submit is none but the “dead” father of the primal
tribe, mentioned by Freud (1912–1913/2001, p. 166). The fact that this
father is “dead” implies that, from the very beginning, the object of the
mother’s desire is irrevocably lost. The child is confronted, thereby,
with the fact that it can no longer be for, or give to, the mother what
she lacks since it is not a “real” thing that she craves, but a “name” or
rather, a “dead” father. In this way, the Imaginary phallus, with which
the child tended to identify itself, gives its place to the Symbolic one,
which is situated in the system of signification, in the realm of the sig-
nifier. Lacan (2006e) calls “symbolic castration” this “shift of (-u) (low-
ercase phi) as phallic image from one side to the other side of the
equation between the imaginary and the symbolic” (p. 697).
In the Symbolic order, love is the force that reminds the male subject of
his castration or lack of phallus. Miller (2014) puts it in other words:
One only really loves from a feminine position. Loving feminizes. That’s
why love is always a bit comical in a man. [ … T]his love puts him in a
position of incompleteness, of dependence. That’s why he can desire
women he doesn’t love, so as to get back to the virile position he
suspends when he loves. [ … ] The more a man devotes himself to just
one woman, the more she tends to take on a maternal signification for
him [ … ]. And when a woman clings on to one man, she castrates him
(para. 8).
This is the meaning of the feminization of Romeo by Juliet’s love.

Romeo has renounced the phallus so as to become a subject and now
he desires it because he wants to be rejoined with his mother as in the
Imaginary order. In turn, in order to become a subject, Juliet has
become the phallus (representing the Other or its object of desire).
Consequently, Juliet’s love reminds Romeo of his castration and lack

of the phallus. That is why he seeks Juliet, who stands for the phallus,
which he no longer has.
Love is distinct from desire, as noted above. Love originates from an
optical illusion where the subject, having fathomed the lack in them-
self, consciously deludes themself into the belief that the other pos-
sesses the phallus, i.e., the object of its desire. As a result, the
individual sublimates the other to the status of the idol/ideal in an
attempt to fill the emptiness at the core of its being. Through the
agency of “love,” the subject fixates on an object and rips it from the
fabric of the other possible objects of desire, thereby putting an end to
the otherwise endless metonymic or associative movement of the
Symbolic order. In this way, love distinguishes itself from desire, in
that the former follows the logic of metaphor rather than that of
metonymy. In other words, desire is never fulfilled, since the moment
we come into possession of the object of desire, the moment we hold
it in our hands, we have the frustrating sense that we have missed our
zek’s (2008b) words,
aim. In Zi
when we encounter in reality an object which has all the properties of

the fantasized object of desire, we are nevertheless necessarily
somewhat disappointed; we experience a certain “this is not it”; it
becomes evident that the finally found real object is not the reference of
desire even though it possesses all the required properties
(pp. 100–101).
This way, the subject will move on endlessly from one object to
another in search of the ultimate object of desire. It is only through
love that this endless metonymic slide of desire could come to a halt.
The illusion proper to love, namely that the other possesses the lost
object of desire, helps the subject out of the vortex of desire by subli-
mating the beloved (or what they possess which enchants the subject)
to the status of the objet petit a. Hence, in a metaphorical gesture, the
beloved is put in the place of the lost object of desire.
Thus, love provides the subject with the Imaginary link between the
Symbolic and the Real. As Fink (2016) puts it, Lacan “situates love as
imaginary in both the courtly love tradition and in psychoanalysis
where love serves as the imaginary link between knowledge—know-
ledge as that which props up jouissance—and death” (p. 101). That is
to say, since love is in the service of the drive, it never makes a move
toward the core of the object; rather, it keeps revolving around the
object, getting satisfaction from this nonstop circulation. The “real pur-
zek (1991) explains, “is not its goal (full satis-
pose of the drive,” as Zi
faction) but its aim,” where “the goal is the final destination, while the
aim is what we intend to do, i.e., the way itself.” Therefore, “the
drive’s ultimate aim is simply to reproduce itself as drive, to return to
its circular path, to continue its path to and from the goal. The real
source of enjoyment is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit”
(p. 5). Now, through sublimating the object into the position of das
Ding, love impedes the subject’s direct access to the object, thereby
keeping alive the prospect of a final, apocalyptic (re-)union with the
Other. The subject derives pleasure and enjoyment from always miss-
ing the “right” moment of attaining the object of desire. This justifies,
according to Fink (2016), “Lacan’s cryptic comment in Seminar X that
‘Only love allows jouissance to condescend to desire’” (101), since the
subject’s main source of jouissance is the ultimate failure of reaching
objet a. This is why the Lacanian jouissance is always an experience of
pleasure-in-pain, deriving from a situation in which the subject, in a
masochistic manner, gets pleasure from the painful experience of fail-
ing to obtain the object of desire.
However, the compromise between jouissance and desire will inev-
itably lead to the breaking down of the Symbolic order with its
emphasis on movement and dynamism. In fact, by its very nature,
desire requires a constant move from one object to another, whereas
jouissance necessitates an infinite circling around one object. In order
for the Symbolic order to survive, the subject has to submit to the logic
of desire and avoid the attempt to bridge the impossible gap between
the signifier and the signified. It is only in death, i.e., in the ultimate
withdrawal from the Symbolic order, that the chain of signification
comes to a halt and the subject can finally experience full jouissance.
This, perhaps, is a justified reading of the closing events of Romeo and
Juliet. The prince, as the ultimate embodiment of the Name of the
Father, orders Romeo to leave the town to put an end to the catastro-
phe that has befallen the Symbolic order due to the lovers’ escapades.
Romeo and Juliet, nevertheless, realize that the only way to save their
love, i.e., to attain jouissance, is to step out of desire’s vicious circle
back into the dark corner of jouissance. As Fink (2016) states,
“[t]ragedy as an art form evokes and broaches our death wish, which
explains part of its allure and frightfulness” (134). Romeo and Juliet, as
a work that (at least) ends in tragedy, underscores this deep primal
human wish for rest and peace.
Love, Death, and the Real
One of the paradoxes posed by love is that one must deny one’s iden-
tity in order to reach love/the beloved: “Lose your symbolic entity to
enable me, on the basis of your loved, fragmented body, to become
entire, whole, one” (Kristeva, 1987, p. 212); yet this is impossible. In a
well-known passage in the balcony scene, after the two subjects have
fallen in love with each other, Juliet, unaware of Romeo’s presence,
addresses Romeo in her soliloquy and asks him to “lose” his identity,
so that in return he can earn her love: “Deny thy father and refuse thy
name;/Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,/And I’ll no longer
be a Capulet” (2.2.35-37), and some lines further below: “Romeo, doff
thy name;/And for that name, which is no part of thee,/Take all
myself” (2.2.47-49). This is the paradox at the heart of love: To reach
love you must die, putting an end to the domination of the Symbolic
that shapes your identity, because—in the end—you cannot reach
what you desire and your desire is never satisfied. The reason behind
this is that you understand within the Symbolic framework and, if you
deprive yourself of this system, then you will not be able to appreciate
or experience the desired. Suicide here is not deemed a sin by the lov-
ers, nor by the other characters; rather, it is seen as a divine solution
to the whole problem: it turns them into “martyrs” of love, giving them
the status of saints (Watts, 2000a, p. 14).
Since “the Real is the event-horizon against which what we can do
and know is defined [ … ,] we will always try to come to terms with it”
by symbolizing it, however doomed this attempt might be (Walsh,
2006, p. 391). Indeed, it is because of our traumatic encounters with
the intractable Real “that we think of any given reality as constructed
and partial rather than definitive” (Walsh, 2006, p. 391). Put simply, as
long as we are subject to the Symbolic order, we remain unable to
experience death, because—if we did?—it means that we are dead,
and then no longer within the Symbolic as death takes us to the Real
order. Since death is associated with the Real order, it cannot be
expressed by Symbolic means (language). The end of the Romeo-Juliet
affair indicates the impossibility of grasping the Real and satisfying

one’s desire in the Symbolic order. Neither of them can reach what
they desire except in death, i.e., by joining the Real and leaving the
Symbolic behind. In other words, the only way to get rid of the vicious
circle of desire is through escaping this circle itself; However, since
our life in the Symbolic order is defined by this vicious circle, it is only
through death that we can leave behind the unbearable and never-
ending demand of desire. The drive, in general, “‘aims’ at the jouis-
sance in the object a but fails” because “complete satisfaction is lethal
for the subject”: thus, all drives “represent death drive,” and “the sub-
ject forms around the hollow left by the object a’s stamp” (MacCannell,
2006, p. 201). The object of both Romeo’s and Juliet’s love is the objet
a, which is the remainder of the Real not the Real itself, so the satis-
faction of love (joining the beloved) gratifies neither Romeo’s nor
Juliet’s desire. In their union, they discern the delusiveness of their
love fantasy; that is the reason why they seek death at the end of the
play. Eventually, they learn the fact that it is only by death that they
can fulfill their desire and seal the rupture within themselves (becom-
ing free from their Symbolic subjectivities).
Final Remarks
Death for Romeo and Juliet carries more than ordinary implications
(physical death). Interestingly enough, before dying, they both find
the opportunity to experience each other’s death. What the death of
the other reveals to them is, as J-L. Nancy believes, “the radical alterity
of the experience, the impossibility of fuzing the other into some
meaningful whole, some larger corporate body” (Chang, 2006, p. 376).
Moreover, the death of the other “does not bring the inexorable truth
of death ‘home’ to me” because “I do not share the experience of the
other’s death,” such that I could “arrive at a fuller, more appreciative
sense of my own.” Rather, “in experiencing the alterity or otherness of
the other at this most altered of moments, I am [ … ] exposed to the
alterity ‘in’ ‘me’” (Chang, 2006, p. 376). Romeo, by observing Juliet’s
death, recognizes that she is not what he desires and that their unity
does not wholly cover the gap (“alterity” in Nancy’s terminology) in
him as a subject of the unconscious or the Symbolic order. The same
is true of Juliet and her observation of Romeo’s death. Whereas
Kristeva (1987) refers to it as their “final orgasm” (p. 215) and “the
most beautiful love dream in the Western world” (p. 216), one could
maintain that what Romeo’s death exposes to Juliet is the “reality” of
love and the impossibility of gratifying one’s desire by replacing the
“Real” object with a “real” one.
In Lacan’s theory, there is no possibility of any harmonious relation-
ship between the sexes because the masculine and the feminine are not
complementary categories, but structures defined by two different rela-
tions to the Other. As Fink (1995) puts it, “[t]here is nothing complemen-
tary about their [the sexes] relationship, nor is there a simple inverse
relationship or some kind of parallelism between them. Rather, each sex
is defined separately with respect to a third term. Thus there is only a
non-relationship, an absence of any conceivable direct relationship
between the sexes” (p. 105). Hence the famous Lacanian dictum that
“there’s no such a thing as a sexual relationship” (as cited in Fink, 1995,
p. 104). In a relationship, we either attempt “to turn the other into what
we think we desire or turn ourselves into that which we think the other
desires,” but we never exactly know what we desire, nor can we find
out what the other desires (Homer, 2005, p. 106). The ultimate relation-
ship of Romeo and Juliet is impossible under the Symbolic since neither
of them is able to attain a deep or thorough knowledge of the other. As
Miller (2014) puts it, “[l]ove is a labyrinth of misunderstandings whose
way out doesn’t exist” (para. 30). Neither Romeo nor Juliet can under-
stand what the other desires, and what they think they themselves
desire is a mere illusive construct of their own fantasies. In the course
of their love relationship, they do their utmost to get close to the other
and learn about the other’s desire as well as their own. However, they
fail for they cannot exceed the rules and frames of the Symbolic order
that controls their perception, understanding, expression, and represen-
tation. In consequence, when they discover the sham of their love and
the unquenchability of their desire, they resort to death as the one and
only solution for removing the restrictions imposed by the Symbolic sys-
tem. And this is the tragedy of love.
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Mohammad Ghaffary, Ph.D., was born in Iran in 1986. He received the Ph.D.
degree in English Literature in 2016 from Shiraz University (Shiraz, Iran). In the
same year, he joined the faculty of Arak University (Arak, Iran), where he is
currently an Assistant Professor of the Department of English. His research
interests include Structuralist and Poststructuralist literary theory, philosophy of
literature, and comparative literature. Aside from publishing numerous essays
in Persian and English in different academic and public journals, he has
translated several books in literary theory from English into Persian.
Ghiasuddin Alizadeh, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English Literature at

Malayer University, Malayer, Iran. He completed his Ph.D. in Iran at Shahid
Beheshti University in 2018. His doctorate focused on the psychoanalytical and
ideological aspects of the English Romantic poetry through readings of Jacques
zek. He has published a number of articles in Persian and
Lacan and Slavoj Zi
English on literary criticism. His research interests are Lacanian psychoanalysis,
zek studies, Romantic literature, and contemporary English poetry.
Zi

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Contemporary Psychoanalysis

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uucp20

The Tragedy of Love: A Study of Love And Death in

Mohammad Ghaffary & Ghiasuddin Alizadeh

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MOHAMMAD GHAFFARY, Ph.D., AND GHIASUDDIN ALIZADEH, Ph.D.

THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE: A STUDY OF LOVE

Abstract. Love is a significant concept in Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory

Address correspondence to Mohammad Ghaffary, Ph.D., Department of English, Arak

Introduction: Jacques Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Literature

J acques Lacan (1901–81) was one of the most influential critical

“castration.” For him, it is language (as a system which is governed by

in every Symbol there remains a (psychic) kernel of the Real; in every

is. Thus, we only know that there is something we lack that we

Theoretical vs. Clinical Psychoanalysis?

There has often been an objection to the sufficiency/efficiency of lit-

Artaud—there exists almost nothing in English that testifies to [Lacan’s]

Lacan’s whole effort is aimed at undermining the naivete of [such a]

Differently put, Lacan perceived fictional characters as “real” subjects

Romeo and Juliet and Psychoanalysis: A Review

remaining from childhood” counteracts their sense of legitimacy and

“limerence,” Kristeva’s “adolescence,” Derrida’s “contretemps,” and

Love in Lacan/Romeo and Juliet in Love

The phrase “tragedy of love,” as C. Bates (2004) notes, seems oxymor-

taken away: That is, what is lacking and, consequently, desired is

the Real is that experience we have [ … ] when we feel that there is no

Love and Fantasy

In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the notion of love is connected with that

Fantasy is defined by the most general form it receives in an algebra I

so “[t]hrough fantasy we construct our social reality as an answer to

ROMEO: I dreamt a dream tonight.

the more general concept of fantasy,7 equates dream with lie

(Homer, 2005, p. 113). Therefore, fantasy gives some consistency,

ROMEO: Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

First of all, such discussions on these characters’ part indicate how

The most passionate forms of love generally involve a total

Love, Desire, and Objet a

ROMEO (Taking Juliet’s hand): If I profane with my unworthiest hand

ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

This scene indeed portrays Romeo’s initiation of a journey to desire,

Is love the love of someone or the love of something? [ … ] Do I love

Thus, from a Derridean viewpoint, when I fall in love, I know there

Love, Desire, and the Phallus

A characteristic feature of the Romeo-Juliet love is the way it ren-

“O sweet Juliet,/Thy beauty hath made me effeminate,/And in my

[ … ] There is a roller, made of stone, of course, which is potentially there at

This is the meaning of the feminization of Romeo by Juliet’s love.

Consequently, Juliet’s love reminds Romeo of his castration and lack

when we encounter in reality an object which has all the properties of

Love, Death, and the Real

affair indicates the impossibility of grasping the Real and satisfying

Bressler, C. (2011). Literary criticism: An introduction to theory and practice

Kristeva, J. (1987). Romeo and Juliet: Love-hatred in the couple. In L. S.

Wagoner, R. E. (1997). The meanings of love: An introduction to philosophy of

Ghiasuddin Alizadeh, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English Literature at

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