Abstract: The three mains subjective positions of psychoanalysis, namely frustration, deprivation and castration defined by Freud, have been reexamined by Lacan with a ternary logic which includes an agent, a lost object and a lack of the object. The author, who is an anthropologist, shows how the lack of the object may be illustrated with different kinds of debt: the inextinguishable debt which underlies witchcraft (frustration), the debt of reciprocity which is at the root of the religions (deprivation), and the symbolic debt, the heart of pums (castration). These examples bring him to note that, if the lacanian definitions of frustration and deprivation are reversed, we have a better understanding of these subjective positions and of the divided subjects that each one of them implies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]