The Other Side: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Shaydim and the Kabbalistic Remainder in Lacan

Table of Contents

Part I: The Architecture of the “Other Side” in Jewish Thought: A Genealogy of the Demonic

The conceptualization of the “demonic” within Jewish thought is not a monolithic or static category. It represents a complex genealogy of the “Other,” one that evolves from a question of external political sovereignty to an immanent folkloric reality, and ultimately to a sophisticated, internalized metaphysical structure. This trajectory charts the development of a complex psychological interiority, where the “other” is progressively relocated from a position of pure exteriority to an inherent and necessary component of reality itself.

**1.1. The Shaydim in Biblical and Talmudic Thought: From Exteriority to Immanence**

The “demonic” makes its first, albeit limited, appearance in the Tanakh as the shaydim (or shedim). These entities appear only twice, and in both instances, they are framed as a problem of theological-political sovereignty rather than ontological evil.1 In Deuteronomy 32:17, the text states, “They sacrificed to demons [shedim], which have no power, deities they did not know”.1 Similarly, Psalm 106:37 laments, “They slaughtered their sons and daughters to the demons [shedim].1

In this biblical framework, the shaydim are not evil demigods in the later Christian sense; they are explicitly “not-gods” 2 or, more precisely, the “gods of foreigners”.1 The sin described is not Manichaean dualism but idolatry. The core transgression is that “they mingled with the nations and learned their deeds”.1 These foreign gods became a “snare” 1, polluting the land. The shaydim thus function as a critical boundary marker, the “other” against which the singularity of the Hebrew God is defined.

A profound conceptual shift occurs in the Talmud. The shaydim (also mazikin) are no longer an abstract external threat but are integrated into the fabric of creation as an immanent folkloric reality. The Talmud is “replete with references” to them.3 They are treated as “real entities” 4 with whom one must contend. This “reality” is domesticated and codified: Rabbis are depicted holding “conversations with them” 3, providing methods for the public to see them (e.g., in Berachot 6a), and establishing halakha (Jewish law) based on their existence, such as laws to avoid the harm they might cause.3 The famous story of King Solomon and Asmodai, king of the shaydim, in Gittin 68b further solidifies their place within the rabbinic worldview.3

This journey from the Tanakh to the Talmud demonstrates a critical internalization. The “other” is no longer simply “over there”—the external god of the Canaanite 1—but “right here,” a known, if dangerous, element of the immanent world that rabbinic law must navigate. This shift prepares the conceptual ground for a far more radical internalization within Jewish mysticism.

1.2. Rationalist Dissent and the Rise of the Dybbuk

This development was not uncontested. Jewish rationalism, most famously articulated by Maimonides, rejected the literal existence of such entities. In the Maimonidean view, shaydim “logically can’t exist at all” and serve purely “homiletic purposes”.4 This rationalist impulse contributed to the shaydim as a concept falling “out of popularity” in many intellectual circles.5

However, the “demonic” did not disappear; it was psychologically reconfigured. The shaydim were “eclipsed in Jewish folklore by the dybbuks”.5 This substitution is profoundly significant. The dybbuk is not a shayd—it is not a pre-existing, non-human entity. A dybbuk is a uniquely human phenomenon: the “disembodied soul” or ghost of a human being.5 It is a soul with “unfinished business” 5, most often defined as one who died having “sinned without performing teshuvah (repentance)”.7

The very etymology of the dybbuk, from the Hebrew lidbok (לִדבּוֹק), meaning “to cleave” or “cling,” is key.7 This is an “intimate possession” 8, an “intrusion” 8, not an attack from a foreign power. It is the “clinging” of an unresolved past.

This “modern” concept of the dybbuk represents a failure of symbolization. The process of teshuvah (repentance) is a deeply symbolic and linguistic act, involving a complex list of steps: “confessing the sin,” “correcting the sin,” “remembering the sin,” and “teaching others not to sin”.7 It is a process of symbolic integration and resolution. The dybbuk is, by definition, a soul that has failed this symbolic integration.7 Its “clinging” is the persistence of an unresolved symbolic debt, a trauma, or a sin that has not been properly “processed” or mourned. It is, in effect, a “return of the repressed” that erupts not as a memory, but in the Real of a subject’s body.

1.3. The Lurianic Metaphysics of the Remainder: Sitra Achra and Kelippot

The final and most radical internalization of the “demonic” occurs in the high-mystical framework of Lurianic Kabbalah. Here, the “demonic” is no longer an external god or a “clinging” ghost; it is a structural and necessary component of creation itself.

This cosmology begins with the Ein-sof (the infinite, unknowable God). To create finite existence, the Ein-sof must perform an act of Tzimtzum (contraction or concealment) 9, creating a “void” or “space for finite existence”.9 Into this void, the divine light was poured, structured by ten vessels (Sefirot). This initial attempt at order failed; the divine energy was too intense, and the vessels shattered (Shevirat ha-Kelim).10

This cosmic Shevirah (Shattering) created the “demonic” as a structural remainder. Two key concepts emerge from this trauma:

Sitra Achra (The “Other Side”): The very act of Tzimtzum and the subsequent Shevirah creates the possibility of “separation from the divine source”.9 This “alienated, evil realm” 12 is the Sitra Achra, the “shadow realm” 11 that “stands in opposition to divine abundance”.9
Kelippot (Husks / Shards): These are the “broken remnants” 11 of the shattered vessels. They are the “waste product” of the cosmic shattering, the shards of a failed order.10

In this Lurianic drama, “divine sparks” (nitzotzot) of holy light were “trapped” or “exiled” by these kelippot.11 The human task is Tikkun ha-Olam (Repair of the World). This tikkun is achieved through Birur (sifting or extraction), the liberation of the trapped sparks from the husks.11 The Torah and the performance of mitzvot are the instruments for this “subjugation” of the Sitra Achra.13

This metaphysical system presents a revolutionary concept of evil. The Sitra Achra and the Kelippot are not a Manichaean, dualistic force co-equal with God. They are a by-product, a remainder, an accident inherent to the very process of creation. The Kelippot are the “remnants” of a failed attempt to “contain the primal energy” of the divine.14 The demonic is thus redefined as the inherent flaw, the waste, or the remainder of the divine Symbolic (the order of the Sefirot) itself. This structure provides a precise and powerful cognate for the Lacanian Real.

Part II: The Topology of the Real in Lacanian Psychoanalysis

To bridge this Kabbalistic cosmology with psychoanalysis, it is necessary to define the corresponding terms in the Lacanian topology of the psyche. Jacques Lacan’s “return to Freud” re-conceptualized the human subject through the “three orders” of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real.15

2.1. The Triadic Orders (Symbolic, Imaginary, Real)

Lacan’s model is not a developmental stage theory, but a topology of three co-existing registers that structure subjectivity.

The Symbolic: This is the realm of language, law, social structure, and the “big Other”.15 It is a “network of empty signifiers” 15 that, by giving the subject a place in language, “splits” them. The unconscious, for Lacan, “is structured like a language”.18
The Imaginary: This is the realm of the image, the ego, and identification.17 It is famously associated with the “Mirror Stage,” the moment the infant (falsely) identifies with its reflection as a whole, coherent object.17 This provides a fiction of wholeness that masks the subject’s fragmented, “split” reality.
The Real: The Real is the “impossible” category.19 It is not “reality” (which is the screen of the Symbolic and Imaginary). The Real is that which is “inassimilable to symbolisation”.20 It is the “domain of that which subsists outside of symbolisation” 20, the traumatic “black hole” 19, and the source of primal anxiety.17

A common misreading is to see the Real merely as a “pre-language” state.17 More accurately, the Real is the void that is retroactively produced by the emergence of the Symbolic. As Lacan states, the Real “emerges from the impossibilities or inconsistencies in the symbolic”.20 By “drawing a line” (the Law), the Symbolic net simultaneously creates the “outside” of that line. The Real is the “hole” 21 or “logical obstacle” 20 within the Symbolic, the part of “brute reality” 11 that the net of language can never, and will never, capture.

2.2. The Remainder of Symbolization: Objet petit a

Lacan’s “central psychoanalytic discovery” is the concept of the objet petit a (object little a).22 This concept is crucial for understanding the remainder of the Symbolic’s operation.

The objet petit a is defined as the “leftover,” the “remnant” (reste), the “surplus” (surplus) 23 that is “left behind by the introduction of the Symbolic in the Real”.23 As the “price of admission into the Symbolic order,” the subject must sacrifice a piece of their “Real” enjoyment.25 This “sacrificed jouissance” 25 or “lost object” 26 is the objet a.

Its function is paradoxical. It is not the object of desire (the thing you want) but the cause of desire (the thing that makes you want).25 It is the “unattainable object of desire” 23 that gives “semblance of being” 24 to the subject’s inherent “lack”.27 Lacan lists its avatars as “partial objects” “cut away from the body by language”: the breast, feces, the gaze, and the voice.25

The objet a thus has a bizarre status as “precious trash.” On one hand, it is the “leftover” 23, the waste product (feces26). On the other hand, it is the agalma, the hidden, precious treasure, the “kernel” 26 that the subject’s fantasy (Imaginary) projects onto the world, and around which all their desire circulates. It is a “hollow, a void” 26 that the subject mistakes for a positive, attainable object.

2.3. The Economics of Transgression: Jouissance

If the Symbolic order (the Law) is what structures the subject, it does so at the cost of jouissance. Jouissance is the French term for “enjoyment,” but in Lacan, it is distinct from “pleasure”.28 The pleasure principle (Freud) seeks equilibrium and the reduction of tension. Jouissance, in contrast, is the “transgression” of the pleasure principle.28

This “beyond” of pleasure is not more pleasure; it is pain or “suffering”.28 It is a “terrible promise” 28 linked to the aggression of the death drive.28 The aim of the drive, Lacan argues, is not satisfaction but the failure of satisfaction, which compels the drive to “restart its circuit”.29

This creates a critical relationship between the Law and jouissance. The Symbolic Law (castration) is what “cuts away” this “lost, sacrificed jouissance”.25 The ethical subject must “embrace castration by positivising a lack”.30 However, the Law does not just prohibit a pre-existing jouissance. In a crucial reversal, the Law retroactively creates it as “forbidden” and “transgressive.” By forbidding something, the Law imbues that “something” with the “terrible promise” 28 of jouissance. The very act of prohibition creates the (transgressive) desire for the enjoyment that was “lost.”

Part III: Structural Homologies: The Real and the Sitra Achra

When this Lurianic metaphysics is placed alongside the Lacanian topology, the two discourses reveal a shared, profound structural logic. They are, in effect, two different languages describing the same fundamental architecture of reality and subjectivity.

**3.1. The Traumatic Void: The Sitra Achra as the Lacanian Real**

The Lurianic “Other Side” (Sitra Achra) is a precise structural cognate for the Lacanian Real. The Tzimtzum, the divine “concealment” or “absence” 9, creates the Sitra Achra as a “shadow realm” 11 defined by “separation from the divine source”.9 This is structurally identical to the Lacan Real as a “negative space” 19, an “impossible” category 19 that is “outside of symbolisation”.20

The Shevirah (Shattering) is the cosmic trauma of the Real’s eruption. It is the moment, as one analysis puts it, that “traumatically breaks apart our psychic and linguistic structures”.11

Remarkably, clinical research exploring the intersection of these two fields has already identified this homology. In analyses of profound suffering, patients “frequently describe their suffering as ‘beyond words’ or ‘impossible to explain'”.9 This “impossible to explain” space of trauma is explicitly identified as “language that echoes Lacan’s conception of the Real as that which lies outside symbolization”.9 These same sources directly equate this space of unspeakable suffering with the Kabbalistic Sitra Achra.9

The Sitra Achra is not “hell” in the conventional sense of a separate place of punishment. It is the constitutive void of the Real created by the founding of the Symbolic (the Sefirot, the divine order). The Law (Torah/Symbolic) creates its own “other side” (Sitra Achra/Real) simply by existing. The Shevirah demonstrates that the “plenitude of the Law becomes a law of death and exile” 32, revealing this inherent rupture at the heart of the Symbolic itself.

3.2. The Fallen Remnant: The Kelippot as Objet petit a

If the Sitra Achra is the Real, then the Kelippot (“Husks”) are the objet petit a. The Kelippot are the “broken remnants” 11 of the Shevirah. The objet a is the “remnant” (reste) 23 of the subject’s “fall” into the Symbolic order.25

The homology rests on the central paradox of “precious trash”:

Kelippot: They are, by definition, worthless “husks” 12, shards, trash. Yet, they become the central object of the human cosmic quest (Tikkun) because they “trap” the “divine sparks” (nitzotzot).11
Objet a: It is, by definition, the “lost object” as trash (feces 26), the “leftover”.23 Yet, it is the most precious object, the “cause of desire” 27, the “kernel” 26 around which the subject’s entire fantasy life is constructed.

From this, a further homology emerges: the Kabbalist’s quest for Tikkun (repair) through Birur (sifting/extraction of sparks from husks) is structurally identical to the Lacanian Drive. The Drive ($Trieb$), in Lacan’s formulation, is not about reaching the goal (satisfaction) but about circling the “eternally lacking object” (objet a).26 The Kabbalist’s Tikkun 10 is this same endless, repetitive process of “sifting” (Birur 11) the “husks” (Kelippot / objet a) in a quest to find the “sparks” (the lost jouissance). Both are interminable processes that structure the subject (the Kabbalist/the analysand) and their “reality.” The Kelippot are the objet a, and the “divine spark” is the lost jouissance they are fantasized to contain.

3.3. Table of Structural Homologies

This complex, multi-level structural mapping can be summarized as follows:

Table 1: Structural Homologies in Lurianic Kabbalah and Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Kabbalistic Concept	Function in System	Lacanian Cognate	Function in System
Ein-sof (The Infinite)	The un-manifest, undifferentiated primal totality; “pre-creation.”	The Real (as totality)	The “primal unknowable” 12 plenitude before the subject’s “fall” into language.
Tzimtzum (Contraction)	The “divine concealment” 9; the foundational act that creates a “void” for finite existence.	Founding of the Symbolic (Primal Repression)	The “introduction of the Symbolic” 23 that “cuts” the Real 25 and creates “lack”.27
Sitra Achra (The “Other Side”)	The “shadow realm” 11 of separation, darkness, and opposition; the void created by Tzimtzum.	The Real (as void/lack)	The “impossible” 19, “negative space” 19, “void in the Other” 21; that which resists symbolization.9
Shevirah (Shattering of Vessels)	The cosmic “trauma” 11 or “rupture” 32; the failure of the initial structures to contain divine energy.	Castration	The “fall” into language; the “splitting” of the subject 26; the “price of admission” into the Symbolic.25
Kelippot (Husks / Shards)	The “broken remnants” 11, “leftover” 23 waste product of the Shevirah that trap divine sparks.	*Objet petit a*	The “remnant” (reste) 24 or “surplus” 23 “left behind” by the subject’s entry into the Symbolic; the “lost object”.26
Nitzotzot (Divine Sparks)	The “exiled… infinite light” 12; the lost object of Tikkun (repair).	Lost Jouissance	The “lost, sacrificed jouissance” 25 that the subject endlessly seeks to recover.
Tikkun / Birur (Repair / Sorting)	The human task of “extracting” 11 the sparks from the husks to restore divine order.	The Drive / Traversing the Fantasy	The subject’s repetitive “circuit” 29 around the objet a 26, attempting to recover the lost jouissance.

Part IV: Figures of the Drive: Possession, Jouissance, and the Lamella

This final section applies these structural homologies to the specific “demonic cognates” of Jewish folklore. The Dybbuk and Shaydim are not merely symbols of the Real or the objet a; they are personifications of the return of these repressed elements, functioning as symptoms of the drive.

**4.1. The Dybbuk as Hysterical Symptom (Neurosis vs. Psychosis)**

The phenomenon of dybbuk possession, when analyzed through the Lacanian “clinical structures” (Neurosis, Psychosis, Perversion) 15, is revealed to be a case of neurosis, not psychosis. Psychosis, in Lacan, involves a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father (the central law of the Symbolic), leading to a collapse of “reality.” Dybbuk possession, conversely, is a classic “hysterical syndrome”.35 The Symbolic Law exists, but it is repressed, inconsistent, or in deadlock.

The definitive analysis of S. Ansky’s play The Dybbuk illustrates this perfectly.21 The dybbuk possession “gives body” to a “deadlock within the order of Law”—a forgotten but binding marriage pact made between the fathers of the lovers. This “repressed signifier” 36 (the pact) “returns” in the Real of the body, causing symptoms (the possession).18 The possession is the repressed truth of the Symbolic order speaking.

The possessed woman’s body (possession is often of a female by a male spirit 8) becomes the site for the Other’s desire (the dead lover) and the Other’s Law (the broken pact) to be articulated.21 This “intimate possession,” sometimes designated in mystical texts as ibbur (“impregnation”) 21, is a perfect staging of the Lacanian maxim that “man’s desire is the desire of the Other”.15 The hysteric (the possessed) asks “What am I in the Other’s desire?” and gives her body as the answer.

4.2. Demonic Figures and Forbidden Jouissance

If the dybbuk is the neurotic symptom, the shaydim and their “demonic mothers” (Lilith, Naamah) 38 are personifications of forbidden jouissance.

A case study of Naamah, the “mother of all demons,” reveals this logic.38 Her name is given two contradictory origins:

“all her deeds were pleasant [ne’imim]”
“she would beat [min’emet] on a drum to draw people to idol worship”.38

This duality maps directly onto the Lacanian distinction between pleasure and jouissance. “Pleasant” is the regulated order of the Pleasure Principle. “Idol worship,” however, is the cardinal transgression of the Symbolic Law (the Torah). This transgressive act, this “going beyond” the established Law, is jouissance. It is the “terrible promise” 28 of an enjoyment outside the Law, an enjoyment that is therefore figured as “demonic” and “suffering”.28 The “demonic mothers” are the name that the Symbolic order gives to this “other,” transgressive, non-phallic enjoyment that it cannot control and must “subdue”.13

**4.3. The Lamella as “Undead” Libido: The Final Cognate**

The culminating insight lies in connecting these folkloric figures to one of Lacan’s most bizarre and potent concepts: the lamella. The lamella is Lacan’s “mythical depiction” 39 of the libido, not as a vital force, but as the “missing part” 41 that has been “lost” or “subtracted from the living being by virtue of the fact that it is subject to the cycle of sexed reproduction” (i.e., the Symbolic order).42

Lacan’s description of this lamella is “not very reassuring”.41 It is:

An “unreal organ” 39, “disembodied”.39
“Indestructible,” “immortal life,” “irrepressible life, life that has need of no organ”.42
“Extra flat, which moves like the amoeba… it goes everywhere”.42
Frightening: “suppose it comes and envelopes your face while you are quietly asleep…”.42
“Excessive desire as indestructible and exterior to the self”.43

This “undead” 44, “immortal” 42 drive is the precise topological location of the Jewish demonic cognate. The shaydim and the dybbuk are the folkloric personification of this “unreal organ” of pure, indestructible libido. The homology is exact:

The dybbuk is a “disembodied soul” 6; the lamella is a “disembodied organ”.39
The dybbuk is an “undead” 5 spirit; the lamella is “immortal life”.42
The dybbuk “clings” (lidbok) 8 to the subject; the lamella is an “exterior” 43 force that “envelops” the subject.42
The dybbuk is the “missing part” of a human (a soul that failed symbolic integration 7); the lamella is the “missing part” of the libido 41, “what is subtracted from the living being”.42
Both are “potentially harmful” 4 and “not very reassuring” 42, the source of “madness” 45 and “demonic attack”.46

The shaydim, and more specifically the dybbuk, are not simply metaphors for the Real or the objet a. In their personified, active, “clinging” form, they are the lamella—Lacan’s myth of the drive itself. They are the “unreal organ” of pure, indestructible libido that persists beyond the “death” of the subject (the entry into the Symbolic), clinging to the subject as an “undead” remnant of the Real.

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Introducing Naamah, the “Mother of All Demons”, accessed on November 4, 2025, https://blog.nli.org.il/en/naamah/
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Appendix – Lacan’s Lamella

Of course. The concept of the lamella is one of the most abstract and, as Lacan himself admitted, “not very reassuring” ideas in his work. It is a “bizarre psychoanalytic myth/metaphor” that he used to explain the fundamental nature of the libido, or the drive, as an “unreal organ”.

The lamella represents the libido not as a vital, life-affirming force, but as an “indestructible” , “disembodied” , and “exterior” persistence of “life” that is separated from the living, sexed body.

The Myth of the Hommelette
Lacan introduces the lamella in his Écrits and Seminar XI through a strange, mythical story. He asks us to imagine what is “lost” when a being enters the cycle of sexual reproduction. He describes this lost “part” as a creature, coining the term hommelette—a portmanteau of homme (man) and omelette.

He provides a vivid, uncanny description of this entity:

“Whenever the membranes of the egg in which the foetus emerges on its way to becoming a new-born are broken, imagine for a moment that something flies off, and that one can do it with an egg as easily as with a man, namely the hommelette, or the lamella.

The lamella is something extra flat, which moves like the amoeba… it goes everywhere. And as it is something… that is related to what the sexed being loses in sexuality, it is, like the amoeba in relation to sexed beings, immortal – because it survives any division… And it can turn around.

Well! This is not very reassuring. But suppose it comes and envelopes your face while you are quietly asleep… This lamella, this organ, whose characteristic is not to exist, but which is nevertheless an organ… is the libido.”

What the Lamella Represents
Lacan’s myth is designed to illustrate several key psychoanalytic concepts:

Libido as an “Unreal Organ”: The lamella is the libido. But it’s an “organ” that is “disembodied” , “lacking mass or substance”. It’s an “indefinitely malleable and indestructible surface”. It is, in effect, the pure drive, existing “exterior to the self” before it gets attached to any specific body part or object.

The “Missing Part” Lost to Sexuality: The lamella is “precisely what is subtracted from the living being by virtue of the fact that it is subject to the cycle of sexed reproduction”. It is the “missing part” of the libido. To become a mortal, “sexed being,” the subject must “lose” this immortal, undifferentiated “life”. The placenta is sometimes used as an analogy: it is an “intimate compliment” to the baby, a part of its life, which must be “extracted” and “discarded” at birth, after which it becomes a “repressed specter” of that initial unity.

Indestructible “Undead” Life: The lamella is “immortal life, irrepressible life, life that has need of no organ, simplified, indestructible life”. This is why it is so “not very reassuring”. It is not a “life force” in a positive sense, but rather a “pure life instinct” that persists beyond the pleasure principle. It is an “unfillable desire” that “never find[s] a state of rest” , which is why it is closely related to Freud’s concept of the death drive. It is the “excessive desire” that keeps going, regardless of the subject’s well-being.

The Lamella and Objet petit a
Finally, Lacan connects this abstract “organ” back to the concrete experiences of desire. He states that the lamella is the primordial “lost object” , and that the specific “partial objects” of the drive—the objet petit a (the breast, feces, the gaze, the voice)—are its stand-ins.

As he concludes in the quote: “And it is of this that all the forms of the objet a that can be enumerated are the representatives, the equivalents”.

In essence, the lamella is the name for the pure, indestructible, and “lost” libido itself. The objet petit a is the “remnant” or “leftover” of this “lost life” , the partial, “fallen” objects around which our all-too-human desire is forced to circulate.

References to the Appendix

https://www.aghi.es/subprojects/lamella

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291828707_How_to_read_Lacan