Matheme

The matheme is a concept introduced in the work of the 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. They are formulae, designed as symbolic representations of his ideas and analyses.

They were intended to introduce some degree of technical rigour in philosophical and psychological writing, replacing the often hard-to-understand verbal descriptions with formulae resembling those used in the hard sciences, and as an easy way to hold, remember, and rehearse some of the core ideas of both Freud and Lacan. For example: $ <> a is the matheme for fantasy in the Freudian-Lacanian sense.