Feher-Gurewich, Judith. “Is Lacan Borderline?” In The Dreams of Interpretation. Edited by Catherine Liu et. al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 147-158.
lacan’s crucial contribution to Freud’s discovery lies in his attempt to break down the fundamental deadlock that led Freud to declare that, because he could not figure out what a woman wanted, he felt unable to move beyond the bedrock of castration and therefore could not find the secret formula to resolve the transference and bring analysis to a close.
What Lacan explains is that to a certain extent Freud himself was trapped in the Oedipal fantasy because he believed an answer could be given to the enigma of femininity. Thus Freud himself could not see that what he had thus discovered was in fact the limit of psychoanalytic knowledge.
There is no mystery beyond castration anxiety and penis envy. Instead there is a hole.
The system of phallic signification of language, of science, of social intraction falls short in offering the ultimate answer to the enigma. The system in which we are inscribed as human beings does not include an explanation either of its origin or of its function. Beyond the fantasy we create as desiring subjects, there is no secret meaniing to be revealed. But this fantasy, or object a, is the best we have to assure the good functioning of desire.