The following article deals with the relationship between the therapeutic possibilities of psychoanalytic treatment and the incurable factor contained in the symptoms as defined by psychoanalysis according to Freud's and Lacan's work. At the end of Freud's work, the irreducible residue of the symptom left him a deadlock about it's destiny in psychoanalytic treatment. On this issue the Lacanian teaching did not retreat. When considering the importance of the symptom in psychoanalysis, Lacan shows that the symptom has a role to the subject and must not be eliminate. Thus, the French psychoanalyst had presented fundamentals to give destination to this non-eliminable rest in the analytic experience. Lacan's conception of the symptom marks the limits of therapeutic effectiveness. These limits are related to the incurable element found in psychoanalysis.
symptom; therapeutic; incurable; Lacan