Patricia McCarthy – A Commentary on Lacan’s Hainamoration and an Introduction to the Affair of Love Between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle
 
THE LETTER 33 (Spring 2005) pages 36-50
 
In keeping with the title of this year’s congress – On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, I am launching my own questions about love and feminine sexuality by talking firstly about a neologism of Lacan’s – hainamoration – the sense of which he developed over the course of two sessions of his Encore seminar. I will quote the definition of hainamoration from the session of 20th March 1973 because here he renders its sense at its clearest:
 
One could say that the more man attributes to the woman a confusion of himself with God, namely, of what she enjoys -remember my schema from the last time, I am not going to do it again – the less he hates; and at the same time, I said that I was equivocating on hait and est in French. Namely, that in this business, moreover, the less he loves.