 In line with Freud’s discussions of fantasizing in psychical life, Lacan treats fantasies, particularly those functioning at the level of fundamental formations of the unconscious, as schematizations (in a quasi-Kantian respect) of desiring subjectivity. Put differently, the wants and wishes of a particular subject are shaped and governed by a peculiar skeletal template, an idiosyncratic and paradigmatic Ur-scene, in which this desiring subject is positioned in a specific manner vis-à-vis a specific object of its desire. This fundamental template/scene is an unconscious formation operating as a transcendental condition of possibility for the subject’s libidinal economy in all its crucial, symptomatic manifestations. Lacan’s matheme for the fantasy is $ ◊ a. The $ stands for the subject of desire brought into being by the barring/splitting consequences of Others’ mediating influences (see  2.3  and  2.4.1  above).