Oliver Eagleton

“Starmer has found it difficult to escape this cycle of dependence because he cannot comprehend a crucial therapeutic insight: that the subject supposed to know knows nothing. Often, an analytic breakthrough comes when the patient realises that the Other to whom she has delegated her authority (or knowledge, or desire) is illusory: an empty signifier. This revelation allows her to take responsibility for her own desire, which is thereby transformed from a conduit for the Other’s will into what Lacan calls ‘decided desire’ or ‘determined desire’. When her experience is no longer mediated by the subject supposed to know, its possibilities are expanded. Dependence is supplanted by autonomy. And that, for Lacanians, is the real meaning of adulthood, although most adults never achieve it.”
― Oliver Eagleton