 Furthermore, there indeed is a thread of continuity between the a of the mirror stage and object a: Both ego (as a) and fantasy (with its a) unconsciously are the subject’s fateful answers to the questions, “What does the Other want?” and “How must I position myself with respect to the desire of the Other?” (see  2.3  above). Lacan’s a, like the rest of his mathemes, is deliberately handled as akin to an algebraic variable. It is a placeholder for any number of particular types of determinants: what an Other desires, what I must be so as to be the object of an Other’s desire, what would at last lay to rest my restless strivings and yearnings, what would do so for a significant Other to whom I remain attached, etc. But, in all cases, a reflects Lacan’s Hegelian-Kojèvian slogan having it that, “man’s desire is the desire of the Other.”