"I learned a lot from Claude Levi-Strauss," says Lacan. First of all, that symbolic structure dominates. What does that mean? The social, kinship relationships, ideology, but also, for each individual, their relationship with the world, the relationships offered by their senses, their family complex. Then, that the imaginary scenarios, that is, the myths and rituals they establish, are necessary to cover the contradictions of economic and social reality. Third lesson: these formations transform and this happens according to mathematical laws."

Lacan invests these lessons in psychoanalysis. The subject confronted with a real that is impossible to symbolize produces an imaginary scenario that brings to the stage a behavior with a certain style that can take the form of a real ritual and even be accompanied by a brief delirium. The overlapping of the Freudian case of the "Man with the Mice" with an episode from Goethe's youth, his passion for the beautiful Friederike, allows the emergence of the type of fantasy in the neurotic: every time he manages to coincide with himself, his sexual partner is duplicated. As soon as his love life unifies, a narcissistic double appears, living with authorization in his place.

Two other texts complete the well-known lecture that gives the title to this volume. A presentation on the religious function of the symbol, which is an opportunity for an entertaining dialogue with Mircea Eliade, and a question posed to Claude Levi-Strauss about the relationship of myths to the specific structure of primitive societies.

Jacques-Alain Miller