Looking through Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party examines a man's developmental stages focusing on the process of becoming the barred subject. Stanley forms exclusive pre-oedipal relationship with Meg until the father figures, Goldberg and McCann, interrupts and lay prohibition on the son's desire for incestuous relations with the mother. In this sense, Stanley's surprise birthday party turns out to be the celebration of his borning again as the subject. However, being cut off from the jouissance, the subject is alienated from his own desire. Therefore, the play also suggests the idea of ethics in psychoanalysis which emphasizes not to give up one's desire. Since Stanley shows hysterical symptoms, the play leaves open the possibility of his becoming ethical subject with Petey's final and crucial advice, that is, we should not conform to others' desires but must come to be the subject of our own desire.