For decades, a classic joke has circulated among Lacanians to exemplify the key role of the Other’s knowledge: a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do their best to convince him that he is not a seed but a man. When he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and is allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back trembling. There is a chicken outside the door and he is afraid that it will eat him. ‘My dear fellow,’ says his doctor, ‘you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man.’ ‘Of
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