The L and R schemas are two of Lacan's didactic diagrams; they articulate the dual relation, between the imaginary (which is dualistic) and the symbolic, (which adds a third element).

Human beings are at first captured in the symbolic order before they are aware of it. They enter into it, through the parades of speech, as in the fort/da game that Freud described in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g).

Schema L developed out of Lacan's study of Poe's story "The Purloined Letter" in his seminar of 1954-55. It depicts the "relation" of the subject with the absolute Other. As the arrows in the schema indicate, it is from the Other (i.e., the unconscious, the "treasure trove of signifiers") that a message reaches the subject in an inverted form. This message makes the subject "fade" when it is received (Figure 1).

In other words, the "relation" of the unconscious subject to the Other—that is, the relation the...