Psychoanalytical experience suggests that there is an empty core at the heart of desire and the object world. Such a void is often taken to be the result of loss, deprivation or faulty development. Without denying this possibility, it is argued that the sense of a void is also part of our mental make-up. Through a metapsychological reading of a theme developed by Lacan in his 7th seminar, the theme of an empty core is elaborated theoretically as the effect of a fundamental gap in the representational world of objects. On this basis, possible meanings of the lost object and of the subject's place in an ethical order are investigated.