Abstract

This paper discusses how, starting from Blaise Pascal’s Wager about God, in his later teaching Lacan rearticulates his Name-of-the-Father concept. Building on a discussion of Lacan’s (1963) single seminar session on the Names-of-the-Father and his 1968–1969 discussion of Pascal’s Wager in Seminar XVI, the author examines what this changing conception implies for the Lacanian approach of psychosis. It is argued that – contrary to what Lacan suggests in the nineteen fifties – within these works from the sixties the Name-of-the-Father no longer refers to a privileged signifier, but to an act of faith concerning the virtuousness of the Other. This act of faith functions as a guarantee for the articulation of the subject, separates the subject from what Lacan calls “object a”, and establishes a positive expectant relation with the Other. The strength of Lacan’s revised conception is that it opens new perspectives on the psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis.