It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his “Seminar on the Purloined Letter,” a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter that fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter – its true addressee is not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself:
“The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing not the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading.”
Addendum: Again, Lacan in his own words:
"And why the Other with a capital O? For a no doubt mad reason, in the same way as it is madness every time we are obliged to bring in signs supplementary to those given by language. Here the mad reason is the following. You are my wife – after all, what do you know about it? You are my master – in reality, are you so sure of that? What creates the founding value of those words is that what is aimed at in the message, as well as what is manifest in the pretence, is that the other is there qua absolute Other. Absolute, that is to say he is recognized, but is not known. In the same way, what constitutes pretence is that, in the end, you don’t know whether it’s a pretence or not. Essentially it is this unknown element in the alterity of the other which characterizes the speech relation on the level on which it is spoken to the other."
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