Some examples of what lacan calls 'subject'

Question

I've been searching to find some examples of 'subject' in psychoanalysis of lacan and i can't find good examples of 'subject of enunciation' and 'subject of enunciated'. Can someone please give some good examples so that i can better understand the idea?

Answer 1

Lacans approach is well described on this website
There, you can find the following statement on your question:

Lacan's distinction between the subject of the enunciated and the subject of the enunciated can be exposed further through examining his treatment of the liar paradox. This is the paradox of someone saying: "I am a liar." The paradox is that, if we suppose the proposition true ("person x is a liar"), we at the same time then have no reason to believe he is telling the truth when he says: "I am a liar." As a liar, he can only be lying when he says this. But what this means is that we must suppose that he is a sincere truth-telling person. Lacan argues that this is a paradox only insofar as we have wrongly collapsed the distinction between the subject enunciated in the sentence, and the subject of the enunciation. A better understanding of the meaning of this utterance can be garnered by presenting the speech-act in both its two dimensions, as a case wherein (to formalize): person x says: "I am a liar." The point is that the "I" in the spoken sentence here is what Lacan calls "the subject of the enunciated." Of this ego, it may (or may not) be true that s/he is a liar. Yet, this ego is in no way to be identified with what we have called "person x" in the above formalization. "Person x" here is not the subject spoken about. S/he is the person speaking. And Lacan's point is that it this subject of the enunciation that addresses itself to the Other supposed to know in analysis, despite whatever egoic plays and ploys the analysand might masquerade before his/her analyst in what s/he enunciates.

The liar example above and the later example on "I am not where I think" might be of help for you.

Answer 2

The subject is one of the most confusing concepts in Lacanian writings.

At the most fundamental level, it is the human mind. However, it is not a clear and distinct Cartesian cogito with an ego, it is Freudian subconsciousness with some Hegelian, Saussurean and Heideggerian elements mixed in.

Here is the best and the clearest definition of the subject as per Lacan: to be a subject is to be a subject to...

Subject is always "subject to" something. To the Symbolic, to the master signifier, to psychoses, to neuroses etc. Human beings are always passively subjected by those things.