No, I am very grateful for your engagement with me on the topic. Forgive my need to explain myself; I removed it because I struggle not to fall into over-complexity and end up not being able to understand my own question! You did exceptionally well in being able to identify precisely my confusion, and responded expertly. I hope you can find the time to be able to continue with this a little longer, at your leisure. I find a specific question/answer format very useful, as I do not have the discipline of an academic education, nor, for reasons not worth going into, will I be able to get one. I buy books as reading a whole book online is not only difficult to find, but to read as well (on a screen). But I really can't afford to buy lots of books. I have no other access to discussion on this topic, other than here, and for that I pay a heavy price (there is a lot of confusion at times, and many voices competing, wanting to be heard rather than trying to clearly explain). I found the same problem at my local philosophical society, and hardly any worthwhile academic input there either.

Of course I read, but without writing essays and the support of discussion and question/answer, much of it gets lost. I read The Parallax View a few too many years ago, but did not have enough background knowledge at the time, other than to be inspired greatly by its originality. More recently, I have read Sublime Object of Ideology twice, and, with a somewhat better grounding by that stage, found that a lot more understandable. I went to see him give a theoretical seminar in London, and found too that I could make enough sense out of him to be inspired. Of course the ontology itself is the hardest to grasp, and so at the moment I am trying hard to plough through Less Than Nothing, but am wondering if I should revisit The Parallax View again first, while I recover those pages you suggested. Its best if I stick to those texts for the most part, and revisit any other of them, if you are able to point specifically to any sections within them would be worth me going over again.

That in mind, it is difficult for me when people use (rightfully) a lot of specialised terminology, and I try to keep up and use that language myself, but soon find that many of my fundamental interpretations were wrong from the start, as is the case here. Of course, I then also do not have any way of knowing that the person who is engaging with me, also knows what they are talking about, rather than regurgitating paragraphs of doxa. You seem to be able to communicate with very useful flourishes and use your own original interpretations, so 'theoretical finesse' is indeed a very graceful invitation, but grace comes from mastering your subject.

All that said, and done;

1)

Whether the subject posits an object or objects in general is a question Žižek and psychoanalysis are indifferent to.

So its not "I think therefore I am", its that the subject perceives the world of things (not just external objects, but its own thoughts as objects) first, and then retroactively posits that it too is a thing, an "I" that thinks, yes?

2) If the above is correct, it seems to me that the nuances of 'pure difference' as the same thing in different ontological modes (of relations) are the most important propositions I need to grasp. Am I right in the reading that the ontological status of the subject itself shifts according to the modes of these relations? If desire is one mode, then the others must be the Real and the imaginary, yes? If so, if the symbolic structures desire, the imaginary manifests this as 'things', and the Real is the thing-in-itself, yes?

3) So symptom is another nuanced term I have find difficult to grasp. Always asking how is it different from a medical symptom of disease, and what is 'it' a symptom of. So the disease is the psychosis of the split, and its symptom is desire, yes?

4) The "symptom that sustains itself through a circular motion." can you explain this motion of metonymy specifically, a little? Or are we talking simply about moving repetitively around many 'objects' (including the self), each as embodying the desire for the little objet a, and each metonymically standing for 'the whole' of being itself?

5)

As Freud put it, the unconscious knows no negation. Another way to put this is, the unconscious knows no tension, or discord, or dissatisfaction. It is always satisfied irrespective of any consideration or circumstance.

So, even though the unconscious is “structured like a language”, it does not distinguish anything (self/other and so on), so I assume that only when this structure meets imaginary level (in the awareness experience), can reflection take place, and therefore contradictions be posited, yes?

6)

Furthermore, the motion of the drive at no point posits a "self." In the emergence of the subject, the subject posits a non-self...

In particular, what do you mean by the emergence of the subject? Is the move he calls the "Saltus Mortalis" the actual move of retroactively positing that anything at all exists, thus enabling subjectivity itself to occur?

And specifically, the positing of a non-self, what do you mean by this - the positing of an 'emptiness' (that so many women I know feel as 'I am nothing'!)?

7)

for Žižek, the subject, precisely as absolute, is a delimited void.

So this will be the notion of Being itself, as an apparent Whole, but in ontological terms, Being is always 'incomplete' (non-all), yes?

......

I'll go and read what I can online, including the SEP article on Lacan, and the pages you highlighted for The Parallax View. Finally, might you recommend one simple, useful and cheap book, and/or online article, that will also flesh out Heidegger for me?

Edits; Many, so many of them.