Una lettera d'amore.

The essay explores theft as a constitutive act of subjectivation, comparing Sartre’s existentialist paradigm with Lacan’s psychoanalytic paradigm. In Sartre, theft realises the lack of Being by conferring identity; in Lacan, on the other hand, object theft – paradigmatic in the Purloined Letter – precedes and generates the process of subjectivation, bringing into play the lost object and the logic of desire. The analysis shows how theft, far from being simple appropriation, functions as a gesture of separation from the gaze of the Other and access to an incalculable remainder, exceeding all symbolic economy. Through clinical examples, the text finally shows how theft can open up possibilities of enjoyment and sexual differentiation that are not reducible to the phallic register, taking shape as the blind writing of a love letter, in which the object is revealed precisely in its subtraction.