79

The Unconsoious struotured like a Language

This paper i:;l concerned with Jacques Lacan's statement: "The Un­
conscious is structured like a Language". It is iR no sense·intended to
be a full investigation of th.eLacanian labyrinth.;.. ;" .. It is ra.ther a '
tentative· venture into enemy 'territory~ S~nce the difficult and the hostile
are locked into a dual relation thai; only a return to the organic state
resolyes, it is imperative' that we resort to various threads (filiations)
't,o make sure of our place in the day light.
What I have not done, then, is to produce some kind of summary of
work of a Lacanian kind done so far within Social Anthropology. There is
a huge distance between Laban's own 'fleeting references to Ethnography,
to Mauss and to Levi-Strauss, and the clinical work carried out by Marie­
Cecile and Edm9nd Ortigues in Dakar' (1962-1966). There isa greater dis­
tance still between the Ortigues i conclusions in Oedipe Africain (1966 :'1973),
and the devastati~; criticisms to which they are SUbjected in the Anti~
Oedipe (1973) 'by Deleuzeand Guetta~i.; It is not that I feel that anyone
should refrain f~am the application of what could be called Lacanian in­
sights within Sooial Anthropology, Such a request would be absurd, given
the fact that it \'1a.s the early,.wr1tings of Levi-Strauss that helped Lacan
to '~epass' a phenomenological position, and move towards a 'structuralist'
one. However, I feel that it is imperative taplace Lacanian Psychoi..
analysis within the social formation of which it is necessarily an ideolw
ogical moment. This 'totalizing' strategy requires more, not less, intel­
lectual rigour, and demands that we read a book such asOedipe Afrioain
symptomatically, with an acute attention to that which is not in the text
itself, and yet cries out to be heard. A pt'eliminary investigation of
certain aspects of Lacanian thought is then, essential, before one Can
consider its descriptive powers in other Cultures.
If we are to think about other cultures it is obviously vital that
..Ie understand the Unconscious rules of formation that delimit the terrain
'uponwhich our lcnowledge claims scientificity for itself. I am thinking
here of the work of such thinkers as Foucault and Derrida, who in their
attempt to 'make strange' the very categories that are the scaffolding of
our social being, necessarily resort to the shimmering surface'of a poetics.
It is simply not sufficient to be forewarned against the dragon of ethno­
centricity as though the heraldry'of one's good intenfions were enough to
restore all intentionality toa (transcendent) innocence. Against ethno­
centricity, its opposite (lack of ethnocentricity) enters the lists, as
if it were a saving grace, as if recognition of the sin were to lead to
redemption. ~ihereas it is precisely our guilt that we see other Cultures
tllr9ugh our own Sociai formation, and in theliEht· or darkness 'of our own
concr~teh.istoricalrelation with them. 3 . '
If Psychoanalysis is iocated within a SOGial 'formation as much as

any -otl,1er form of kD.ol'1iedge',it is also' a form that-has the power to rise

ahoveits o~nlcomplicitywiththe dominant ideology~- If American Ego­

psyohology can be shown fa 'have an almoot completely normative ideological

function (c~. O. Mannoni 1971: 180-190), the same cannot, be too easily

claimed for Freud's initial formulations in Vienna at the beginning of the

century, nor for Lacan's brave theoretioal inquiries from the 1930' s until

no"l. Since PsyChoanalysis" is 'cOncerned with the dialectical relation

petween persons, as both Imaginary and Symbolic (and Real) constructions,

it is the key Sciencewiuh which to unveil the ideological instance of a

'Social formation~ This was explicitly recognized by ·~T. Reich 'asearly as

1929 (1;1. Reich 1929/1912); and has been reiterated 'in a different way by
Althusser. Ih a short paper on Lacan5, Althusser has· acknowledged his
debt to him, !ind a~mostall his writings on ideology are permeatedwtth
'what is in fact 'a' Lacanian approach to 'the Imaginary" and to, 'the,_
 80

fet ishisations that'· hinder thought's appropria t :Lon of:' the real t •
" .

In this.paper, I have lai,d a very limited stress on t'he Levi-Straussian

nature of 'The Symbolic' and the Hegelian nature of 'The Imaginary'. vlhat
I have done is to read Freud thrQugh Lacanian spectacles, referring to those
aspects of DeSaussure and Jakobson that helped Lacan to clarify his con­
cept of an Unconscious structured like a Language. It is an inadequate
account insofar as it reduces the complexity of the Lacanian problematic
in favour of a clarity which can only mislead. The answer to that is, of
course, simple: to understand Lacan,there is no alternative but to read
Lacan. But, in. addition, (and this isth,e sJ,ant I have given to this ,paper)
one should read Freud. As Lacan writes:

" • •• on lit FreUd comme on ~'cri t dans la Psychanalyse ~"

, ,(Ec+,its '1966)

, By which Lacan means that his, return to J)'reud is a return to' more than .
just the spirit,. it, is a return to the letter, to wit , to Freud t s ' cit-Tn use
of Language and choice of terms,. L,acan' s obsessive concern with language
is no more than a cont inuation of J!'reud' s own, and any theme of Freud's
(viz: "\lhere Id was, there Ego shall be") is played in the. forra. of several
different variations (Ecrits: 1966:416;801). '

Anna O. (Bertha von Pappenheim) dubbed Freud's therapeutic method

"the talking cure", and it· is. there from the mouth from one 1'lho is to be
cured, that,Psychoanalysis founds its own specific ,discourse. There are
of course, several other models in operation in the Psychoanalytic armoury,
and these will be referred to in passing in this ~aper. Some of them have
been passed over almost in silence (it would seem) by Lacan, and it is from
these that a movement antithetical to Lacan has arisen luthin Lacanian
Psychoanalysis. 6 But if so many analysts following Freud acquiesced in
the repression of the function of the analysand's word in therapy,
Lacan's theoretical interventions may I think be seen as a return of the
repressed. His 'Discours du Rome', a highly polemical talk given to the
Congress of·Psychoanalysts in 1953, is specifically concerned with the word
of the patient:

"\'lhether it sees itself as an instrument of 'healing, of

formation, or of exploration in depth, psychoanalysis

has only a single intermediary: the patient' s ~V'Ord."

. ' '. ,(1953/1968:9)

But the talking-cure is characterized not by bringing the symptom to

consciousness: it is made word. It is the insistence of the letter that

is in question not that of the sUbject~ consciousness. Nor is it neces­

sarily a q'uestion of the good faith or love of the analyst. The analyst

does not direct the consciousness of the patient, it is not a question of

moral guidance. He directs the cure, and in the analytic situation his

own'being (through transference and countertranSference) is also put into

question (Ecrits 1966:586).

This paper is concerned precisely with the capture of the human

animal within 'the nets of the signifier' (Laplanche and Leclaire: 1961),

so that he then becomes an animal gifted with speech. Gifted even in that

despotic sense given' to the vlOrd' 'gift' by Marcel Nauss: the \'1retch is

. obliged both to receive:theword, and reply to it. Both sender and re­
ceiver are compromised" in that the gift is syn-thetic,' & constitutes a
relation which inheres in neither person (persona), but derives from the
symbolic totality which preceded and determined them. Neither word, nor
'copper', nor 'vaygu'a'" nor phallus (as Lacaniansignifier of desire'),

/
 81

can be finally appropriated. The search for their essence is an imaginary

project, a fetishisation. Their essence resides only in their existence
as circulating signs that bind social persons in relations that are nowhere.

Even as early as Studies on H~steria (SE II), the clinical study

that Freud wrote with Breuer, there are definite linguistic insights as
regards the working of the psychic apparatus. However it is in The
Interpretation of Dreams (SE IV-V) that we find a way fOI'Vlard to a linguistic
formula tion of the nature of the Unconscious. Thus, ]'reud makes a clear
division between the manifest dream-text, and the latent dream-thoughts.
The manifest dream-text is the text of the dream that the subject assembles
on waking, whereas the latent dream-thoughts comprise the more complete
dream underlying the former:

trThe dream-thoughts and the dream-content are presented

to us like different versions of the same subject matter
in two different languages" (SE IV: 277)

The Unconscious is presented here as a different language underlying

the manifest language. The dream-content is described as a 'transcript'
of the dream-thoughts 'into another mode of expression', and we are asked
to 'compare the original and the translation'.

Condensation and Displacement

To make Freud's thought clear, we should concentrate, as he does, on

the operations that link the manifest content of the dream to the latent
dream-thoughts. The two key operations are those of Condensation and Dis­
placement.

Let us take condensation first.. If we compare the manifest content

of the dream, as we assemble it upon waking, or again as it is told to the
analyst, with the latent dream-thoughts that are teased out of the words
and silences in the analysis itself, we find that the latent dream-thoughts
are far more extensive than the manifest content. To put it simply, the
manifest dream is laconic. I·t has been radically condensed. Many· of
the examples of dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams are approximately
four or five lines long, whereas the dream-thought that Freud draws out
of them, like theeridless stream of silk scarves tied to each other that
a magician draws from his ha~, are often four or five pages long.. Con­
denaation.is immense, so immense in fact that interpretation is never final.
If· we take anyone element· in the manifest dream, it is condensed or
'over-determined' •. lilien \'le say that it is over-determined we mean· that
it has multiple connections \'lith other elements in the' latent dream;"
thoughts. Freud notes in his analysis of the dream about the 'botanical
monograph' ,that the word 'botanical' led 'by numerous connecting paths,
deeper and deeper into the tangle of dream-thoughts' (SE IV~ pp •. 16-9-176).
Because the word 'botanical' is so heavily over-detel~ined, it is described
as 'a regular nodal point in the dream'. ElseHlhereFreud uses· the word
'S\'litch-word' '·to describe the same idea, and in this metaphor the idea of
a 'points' system is evoked, where the word is seen as a kind of switch
located at the intersection of several different tracks or pathways. Lacan
makes much of these terms used by Freud, and provides several variant trans­
lations (ie 'noeuds de signification', 'motscarrefours' etc.). The
Lacanian Symbolic Order (derived ,from Levi-Strauss' Symbolic Function,
and opposed to Freud's Die Symbolik) is characterized by the plurivalent
nature of each signifier.

Displacement, the second lcey operation in the formation of dreams,

refers to the fact that 'the dream is, as it were, differently centred
from the dream-thoughts' (SE V: 305). Elements which are central to the
 82

manifest content may be peripheral to the latent dream-thoughts. In the

same way, elements which are crucial to th~ latent dream-thou~hts may
be completely absent from the manifest text. It is the vlOrk {the labour)
done by the patient in his free association (and against the fact of his
own resistance) ti1at allows us to retrace the connections between the two
systems • Displacement is a form ot 'tdistorti'on t ., a distortion made neces­
sary. by, the e:X:istence of tcensorship'betlqeenthe different 'systems' of
the mind • .

Metaphor and Metonymy

ACGordingto De Saussure (1974), any linguistic sign involved two

modes of arrangement, Combination and Selection•. Combination refers to

the fact that each sign is made up of constituent signs and can only

occur with other signs. De Saussure stres.sed the linear nature of the

signifying chain (1974:70) - in fact it is the second property he singles

out for emphasis after the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. It is

combination that unites the links of the signifying chain, one to each

other, and once they have been combined they are in a relation of conti­

guity to each other.

The axis of Combination is concerned with the Message. It is dia­

chronic and can best be represented horizontally. It represents, in
Saussurean terrrls, Speech rather than Language, event rather than structure.
The other mode of arrangement of a linguistic sign is known as Seleo­
. tion and it refers to the seleotion of signs from a set. Any selection
from a set implies the' possibility that another sign mig~t be sub~titu~ed
in its place. This of course implies that Selection and Substitution are
both aspects of the same operation.
The axis of Substitution is concerned with the code, and can best be
represented as vertical •.. It represents Language rather than Speech,
structure rather than event. It is vital to realize that, in normal
speech, the two axes operate in conjunction. Combination an~ Selection
together arrange linguistic signs. It is only in language disorders
that we can clearlype~ceive the separate nature of the two modes. of
arrangement. Thus, it trlas"through his study of the different kinds of
Aphasia that Jakobsonwas uble to distinguish one from the other (1963:
43-68). Indeed, the fact that both Jakobsan and, after him, Barthes
(1967:~1) have reserved the term 'Idiolect' primarily to describe the
language of the aphasic, a language marked by its skewed participation
in the Symbolic Order (cf. Levi-Strauss 1950: xvi-xvii), should remind
us·that Aphasia shows us language in a state of ,disintegration.
From. his study Jakobsonconcludes that there are basically tuo

poles of language, 'the Metaphoric and the IvIetonymic, an9. that these ttrl0

poles are linlted to the two modes of arrangement of the linguistic sign.

Depending upon the type of Aphasia concerned (C,ontiguity Disorder: ,Simi­

larity Disorder), those suffering from it tended to produce a kind of

language centred either on the Metaphoric or the Metonynlicpoles •.

The concepts of Metaphor and Metonymy developed by Jakobson are used

in a slightly altered form by Lacan in his model of the Unconscious
stI.'lJ.c:j;ure4l~ke a Language. For Lacan, . the Freudian concepts of Conden­
sation and Displacement that we have already discussed,;: are directly
homologous idth the Jakobsonian concepts of 'N~taphor and ,1Vletonymy (Eorits
1966: 495). Critics of Lacan have questioned the validity of the Metaphor/
~Ietonymy distinction. Anthony vlilden (1972 ) argues ,-that the two terms are
in no l'lUy specific to language, but can be equated 'with (more general)
prooesses present in all forms of c9mmunication:
 83
"Metaphor and Metonymy are not primarily linguistic processes:
they are communicational processes. Selection from the code
and combination in the message must and do occur in any
communicational system whatsoever, whether in the genetic
code of the DNA molecule, or in the organism, or in the
life'processes of bacteria, or in a social systemll • (1972:
350)
This is undeniable, but Jakobson in his study of Aphasia ~

dealing quite specifically 1'1ith language and its disintegration. In

that study he did isolate two poles of language, the metaphoric and the

metonymic. It may be that these two poles exist in all communication,

but the beauty ,of Jakobson's study was that it located the existence of

these two poles in language, and since one pole was damaged in each of

the different forms of aphasia, it provided a means of dividing parts of

a process that is unified in everyday speech. In studying social life

there are several possible epistemological confusions with regard to

'levels'. One can sumcumb to the temptations of a 'micro-measurement'

that studies phenomena at a level that is belou' the level at which

,'meaning' resides (Ardener 1971: 451-452). Since one of Lacan's finest

pieces of writing, the Seminar on The Purloined Letter by Edgar Alan Poe ,
(Ecrits 1966: pp. 11-61), is about precisely just such a misapprehension"
one'has to be ver,y cautious before accusing him of that kind of theoretica~
inadequacy. Wilden does not exactly accuse Lacan of such a 'misapprehensioIT,
but his claim that Lacan reduces the cultural to the ontological (1972: 479­
483) is a parallel critique that demands more substantiation than Wilden
offers. Indeed, at this point, Wilden's polemic seems to lean very heavily
on Fanon' s critique of the applic at ion of European Psychoanalysis and
P'sychiatry to other cultures. If Fanon' s 't'fOrk (1970) is conce;rned with the
violence of reducing psychic phenomena that are actually relative to a
particular historical conjuncture to a supposedly transcendent ontological
reality, Wilden's appropriation of it does not blend easily with the general
systems theory approach of System and Structure (1972). Whatever one may
think of the Lacanian Symbolic, and however much one may regard it as
permeated by Imagina~y fetishizations, it is nevertheless defined as a
tissue of meaning and not as a mechanism that determines. When I refer to
determination here I do not mean that fatal determination, that celestial
pre-ordination of which Lacan writes so often•. I mean determination i6­
'suing from the (Marxist.) real, a determination present in the real and its
productions, and one that underlies the overdetermination present in. the,
Symbolic. Hegelian and Idealist as Lacan.finally is, it is an error to
confuse the tissue of signs that is the S;Y'1llbolic with the exchange' of
~nergy and information that. characterizes organization at the eco-systemic
level. The Lacanian dialectic must be inverted, and. each moment of the
Symbolic must be reckoned as being in the last instance determined by the
infrastructure •. Wilden.by subsuming ,the Symbolic SO absolutely within'
an ecosys'temic perspective, obscures the level at which Ideology does over­
determine social reality and estranges people from the nature of the lives
iZhey lead.

Phillipe's Dream

I want, in this section, to reach a deeper understanding of the lin­

guistic relations within the psychic apparatus, by taking a particular
dream and considering a Lacanian analysis of it. I want to do this in
order to demonstrate that we are dealing here not only witll the construc­
tion of dreams, but also with the general workings of the Unconscious.
If' we are dealing with the latter, then our ~~nclusions are necessarily
relevant to all areas of Social Anthropology where the Unconscious is
described, invoked or dismissed. Ida not mean by this that the Lacanian
 84

model can necessarily be used in the analysis of other Cultures. I mean

only to suggest that Lacan's reading of Freud is one that canhot be ignored,
and one that is crucial to any evaluation of other psychoanalytical posi­
tions that concern Social Anthropology (ie Roheirn,' Kardiner, Jung, Fanon
etc.)
The dream is taken from an article by Laplanche and ~eclaire (1961).
Their general theoretical position was, at that time close to that of Lacan
(Ecrits 1966: 493-531). Ideally, of course, He should take an English
example of this kind of approach, for 'the sake of verbal resonances,' but
I am not aware of the existence of any studies of this nature originally
i'1ritten in English. In the'clinical situation, the dreams!', Phillipe had
not only recounted another dream closely related to the one given below,
but the material of the dream lias lent further significance by certain
items of obsessional behaviour present in the' patient. I have ,made only
minimal reference to the second dream, and to the patient's symptoms, as
I "Tanted to carry out a fairly simple exposition'­
Phillipe's Dream
The deserted square of a small town~ La place'deserts d'une 'petite ville;
it is unfamilia.r, I am :looking for • c'estinsolite, je cherche :'quelque
something. Liliane appears, barefoot chose. Apparait ,pieds nus, Lilialile
- I don't know her - she says to me: - que jene connais pas ... qui me .
its a long time sinc'e I '-ve seen such dit: il y a longtempsque j'ai vu
fine sand. Ive are ina forest and lin sable aussifin. Nous sommes en
the trees seem curious~ coloured, . fo-ret etles arbres paraissent·
with bright and simple colours. I evieusement colores, de teintes
think to myself that there must be vives et simples. 3e pense qu'ily
plenty of animaIs'in this forest, a beaucoupd'ariimaux dans cette
and just as I am about to say it, a 'foret, et comme je m' appreitea Ie
Unicorn crosses our path; all three dire, une licorna croise notre
of us walk towards a olearing that is chemin; nous ma~chons tous les trois
visible down below. vel'S une clair:L'~:r.eq' .. ~ I' on devine
en contrebas.'
....... # ~
.. " ..... , .. . . ~, . . . . ' •

This dream..text on' its' own tells us almost nothing. Hithout the free
association of the dreamer it is worthless •. This cannot be stressed too
much.:7 In the text, the significance of the 1Jords present. ini t is not
given to us, but is'discovered in the process of analysis. The exact forma­
tionof the dream derives from several sources'; (1) Events of the previous
day, which in the context of the dream are described by J?reudas 'daytime
residues', (2) stimuli originating from \1ithin the body, in this case,the
needtodririk,the sUbject having eaten salted herrings the previous evening;
(3) events from the past,'and in particular, memories stretching far back
into:childhood. Freuddesc:ribes dreams as 'hypermnemic' , and insists on
the permanence oftha memory-trace within the psychic apparatus, although
:Ln his attempts to desc:ribe this fact heoftenfolihd himself in great, dif­
ficulties. As early as 1895, in 'The Pro,iect, he 'had stressed that no Psy­
chology worthy of the name could be established unless it was securely founded
on a theory of human memory. We shall see in the later part of this paper,
how important Freud's concept of memory was to his understanding of the Un­
conscious, and how it can be interpreted in a manner that is explicitly
opposed to the Lacanian position (Derrida: 1967/1972).' .
In thisacoount I have chosen to treat the psychic and somatic resi­
due's, of' the previous day together.
(1) (2). 'Events' of the previous day (Daytime residues)

There were various daytime residues, in the form of memory traces

of uhat Phillipe had done the previous day, that contributed to the con­
 85

struction of the dream. Phillipe"had' in, fact taken a walk the previous
day in the forest with his niece Anne. They had noticed at the bottom
of the valley where the st.reamran,' traces of deer and does ,where they
came to drink. On this walk, Phillipe remarked that it was a long time
since he had seen (il y a longtemps que J'ai vu) heather of such rich
flaming colour. These daytime residues play a significant part in the
dream, as can be ascertained by glancing back at the original text of
Phillipe's dream. 8 .'.
At the somatic level we notice that Phillipe had eaten some herrings
that evening, and therefore had a ~to drink. Dreams, it will be re­
membered, are described by Freud as the guardians of sleep. In this ,case,
the dream guards Phillipe' s sleep against the organic fact of his thirs t,
against his physiological need to drink. The dream guards Phillipe's
sleep by fulfilling a (repressed) t'1iSh.. It cannot fulfil his need to
drink: only some liquid can do that. The dream fulfils a (repressed)
wish or desire to drink (a desire that is inscribed in one of the subject's
memory systems), and subsumes the (temporary)organic need of the sUbject's
body within its own (timeless) trajectory.

(3) Childhood Memories

(a) The first memory was of a Summer holiday when he was three years
old: he tried to drink the water which was flowing in a fountain. He
cupped his hands together and drank out of the hollow that his cupped
hands formed. The· fountain was in the Square (Place) of a small t.oVin
and had 'a Unicorn (Licorne) engraved in the stone. .

(b) The second memory was of a walk in the mountains vlhen he was

three years old. The walk was tied to the memory of imitating an older

child cupping his hands, and blowing through them, imitating a siren

call. ' This memory was also associated with the phrase 'II y a longtemps

que J'ai vu' ~

(c) The third childhood memory was of an Atlantic Beach (Plage) and
again the phrase 'il y a longtemps que J'ai vu un sable aussi fin'. This
¥as associated with Liliane - a barefoot woman in the dream who said
~xactly that~

In the course of the analysis, Phillipe took apart the name Liliane,
and separated it into the two componehts'Lili and Anne. Anne, as we
~lready 10101'1, was his niece, and Lili, his Mother's cousin~ Lili had
actually been \'lith him on that Atlantic beach, when he was three years
Old" at the beginning of those selile Summer holidays when he had been taken
to the town with the fountain and the Unicorn engraved on it. It is im­
portantto bear 'the French not the English words in'mihd, and to note the
various homophones (between Lili and Licorne, Place arid Plage ate.:) ,"
These linguistic cOllilections will, be shown' to be 'more,' and more signifi­
cant as the vlork of interpretation advances. ' ,. '

We have already seen that, if, as Freud has said, all dre~ls are
the fulfilment of a (repressed) wish, then this dream, from all &lgles,
finds its centre, its unity in the need or'tlre desire to drlllk. On that
hot July day, when he was three, Phillipe had said again and again,
and with great insistence 'J'ai soif' or tChoif'. Lili, his mother's
cousin, used to tease him, and say tAlors, Phillipe J'ai soU', and it
became a kind of formula, and the sign of a joking relationship between
them: 'Phillipe-J' ai-Soif' •
 86 :'

At this pQint, this nodal point we remark that Phillipefs thirst

is (at the le~tJ doubly determined.' it derives organically from hi-sneed
to drink that night when· he dreamt the dreaJnn but it also derives
, psychically from the desire to drink which the demand emanating from th& .
Symbolic has caused to be inscribed in him; in the waxen surface ,of his·
memory. Since dreams are hypermnemic (Freud); since they permit,apri­
vileged regression to that point "at which cllildhood memory ap~ars to,
constitute its unthinkable origins, 'we are 90ncerned with the. 'primal' ,-<and
therefore mythically constituted) formation of desire. Weare concerned
with the point of entrance of the 'drive' \~to psychical life. Dreams
(and indeed lapses) are a priVileged path, a royal road bacle to that
(mythical) moment at WhichJdifterence~ is ,stablished and tl~ global
calibration'of signifier to 'signified almost obscures the sovreignty of
that transcendent signifier' which"actuallY9perates as .a redouble~ .fury. ;:
in the: very heart of objects., '

·AsI have' said, need has no place in psychical life. Only the
'representatives' or· 'delegates' of need may enter the agencies of the
mind • .If we consider Phillipe's dream, we 9anidentify the Ideational
Representative of the oral drive, which is ~'the 'first to be disting.uished
in post-natal development" (1972: 140). , At the level of need, Phillipe '
was easy to feed and easily satisfied, but we 8I'E1not concerned with need
but with the fixation of drives to their ideational'repI'ElsEmtativea. 1:1e
are concerned with both Death and Sexuality, although the representation
of the death";driveis most clearly d:i.sQerniple in the dream we have
ohosen not toconaj..der·., ,,1;le find two representatives otthe oral drive
in tbedream. One.isa. gesture,. the other a formula. ' They aI'EI not
:J;>resent :Ln the manifest ·content of thedrea!ll but can only be identified
after freeastllociatlon.
, The .estureWhioh 14 "'r$gistered'·Gr'~scr:i.bed' Q$,an .~.t
is the gelture.of cupping t-he,hs.ndstosethe~ in aoonch. shape to produoe.
a,s.iran call •. Ullli 'learn ,f':rom thee,na1¥'sa.nd. tl1atthis gesture is tie<Lt-o
the oupping of the hands togethet' at the fountain of t~ Uni,()Qrn, .a.nd
thus signifies '.quenched thirst'. \Jhen I 1frite that tllis gesture sig;'
nifies tq~enched thirst', it is pree~$ely ~he nature of tb1s signi£ioat;ion
that is in' question. What kind of relatioll is there betweenaJa' aoousti9
chain present in the psychic apparatus., and any visual chains that are
also there. This l'elat:ton is espeoially crucial to any undentanding .ot
the structure of the Unconscious. Eugen B~ has remarked that: ,
.', 1

"the semantic ambiguity of a·natural language could not exist

:withol.1t, a more gener.al type of semiology supporting it by
instances such as 'momentE,i of s:Uenc.e, blushes and. gestures. II,
,,; , .' ' .. ' , (197l:'246)
"
This more general semiology, which:eJeistence Lacan has emphaticall,ydenied;
cannot yet be said to ha.vebeen oreated•. ~hose theorists, following Lacan,
whQ have ,been concerned with' jU!=lt such a g~meral Semiology, have tended .t·o
do little more than extend ce:J;'taill metaphors already present in, Freu,d' s "
writings.

·The second representative of the oral drive is the formula 'J'ai

soif' •..It is a kind of representative in this boiling hot Sl.llIllI!.er of
Phillipe'smoi,his ego. Since the.Laoani~n ~go is constructed out .of
a baSic misrecognition, ~nd is 'embroiled~ an-endless struggle for
recognition'from the other, it can be said to ,be syno:nymoua. with t1,le
death-drive.9 The formula j.s al150 associa~edwithLil;i.. as we saw in the
narration of the third childhood memory (o~ th~AtlanticBeacl;l) elicited
in the course of the analytic session. Since we are concerned with the
oral drive, we are by definition concerned with the question of thirst,
 87

and in this context it is important to note that the acoustic chain '1i'
is common to both '!!corne' and '!iIi', the woman' who listens to his cry
of thirst and is in a position, it seems, to receive his word. It
seemed like that to Phillipe because Lili was seen by him to have an
'ideal' marriage to her husband, and thus symbolized a harmony and satis­
faction not present in Phillipe's Mother's marriage. A harmony and satis­
fa.ction doubly associated l"lith the acoustic chain 'Ii' in French: for 'Ii'
can be metonymica.lly connected with 'lit', and Lili with '1010', which
signifies 'milk' or 'breast' in French baby talk. .

The Vnconscious§tructured like a Language

When La.can claimed that the Unconscious was structured like a lang­
uage, he meant exactly what he said:

'I do not mean a structure to be situated in some sort

of so-called generalized semiology draWl1 from the limbo
of its periphery, but the structure of language as it
manifests itself in the language which I might call
positive, those l'lhich are actually spoken by the mass
of human beings'. (Ecrits.1966:444)

There are certain objections to this statement implicit in Freud's ~witings,

I want to consider these objections before continuing the argument.

Freud talked of language eXisting in the Preconscious, and in the

Secondar,y Process (Which is at work III the Preconscious), but the language
he saw as existing in the Unconscious was something very different. The
fact of there being no negation, no logic, no syntax and no time in the
Unconscious makes it hard for us to accord any process there the status
of a language as it is spoken 'by the mass' of human beings'. Ilithout
negation, it is hard to imagine the metacOlumunication that is vital to
any language.

There was a language in the Primary Process, Freud stressed (SE

~IV: 199), but it was the language of Psychosis, and of dreams in their
X'egr~ssion to the form of images:

"In Schizophrenia words are subjected to the same process

as that which makes the dream-images out of latent dream­
thoughts - to what we have called the primar,y psychical
process. They undergo condensation, and by means of
displacement transfer their cathexes to one another in'
their entirety. The process may go so far that a single
word, if it is specially suitable on account of its,
numerous connections, takes over the representatiort 9f .
a vlhole train of thought'. (sm XIV: 199)~·. .

Here, in the 1915 paper on 'The Unconscious' 1I1e clearly have sorle kind of
conception of an Unconscious structured like a language. As Ricoeur
points out (1970:400) 'the problem is to assign an appropriate meaning to
the word "like"'. Is language a priVileged model that we compare with
the structure of the Unconscious? Or does the term 'a language' merely
mean that the Unconscious is semiologically structured, with language
a term of reference only because of its role in the Preconscious and the
Conscious?

Thing-Presentations and Word Presentations

In his analysis of the relations between the different systems of

the mind Freud introduced a new terminology in 1914/1915. He distinguished
 88
, .
sharply between what he called 'Thing-Presentation' (Sachvorstellung)
and '\'lord-Presentation' (\lortvorstellUllg). It is significant to note
that the nuances of these terms were often lost in early translations,
which saw 'vorstellung' as meaning 'idea' and'not 'presentation'.
' ..
Thing-Presentations are essentially visual, they are perceptual
entities, images or memory traces.. Freud's description of them in ~
Ego and TheId as 'optical memOry residues' shoHs in fact hO~l little con­
flict there is between this new terminology and the terminology of
"inscription', whereas in 1915 he had been quite adamant that the new
terminology rendered the old One redundant. \10.rd..:.pr.esentations are
essentially 'auditory' - 'The essence of a ~ord is after all the memory­
trace of a word that has been heard' (1961:21) - and in this sense are
De Saussure's acoustic chain.
Freud expressed the relation between the Thing-Presentation and the
Word.Presentation, and their participation in the different 'systems'
in this way: .

'The conscious presentation comprises the presentation of

the thing plus the presentation of the word belonging
to it, while the unconscious presentation is the present­
ation of the thing alone'. (SE XIV:201) . ' .

The unconscious presentation is stated here to be 'The presentation of the

thing alone '. In 'that sense can this kind of presentation be said to be
linguistic? The lingu.istic·sign has' two basic components, the· concept
and the acoustic image.lO What is the exact nature of the thing-presentation
in relation to this? It should be clear by now that Freud was uncertain,
and that not all of his statemerrGs are consistent with each other. He was
at least clear in his own mind that the thing-presentation.could not
attain consciousnesS without 'being 'bound' to a vtord-presentation (and
the Bioenergetic language of 'binding' is significant here): .
'The locality at which the Repressed breaks through is the
word-presentation and not the concept attached to it' (SE XIV)
Here, the Thing-rresentation would seem to be simply the Saussurean concept
in the formula rboncept\ .signified, initially set· out by De Saussure in
lacoustid aignifie~
\imagel '\ . J
. . "" ,/ ......;/.. .
the Cours (1974) ."-'However, Fre-crd is clearly' not happy wi th a simple tl'10­
tiered formula, and is always half a..ta1"e that .there is some kind of sig­
nifying chain in· the Unconscious too. This paper is l!3-rgely concerned
with the different. attempts that have been made to formulate clearly
Freud's fleeting perceptions as, 'to the relation between' the Unconscious
and Language. Both Psychoanalysis and Linguistics', once they are brought
together, seem to demand 'c.ex-tain, modifications in each other.
The original formula of De Saussure places the signified. above the
signifier, r'~ Concept
. tree .. JAcoustic image
Lacan, for r:ason~lated to the nature
reverses thi~o·rmula:
of Repression and. the Unconscious,
/- .~

..
..
(
,"
.~:::~"e 1
.,,;. :'
Acoustic image
. Concept
. .,..... ·'l·~ /
~
l'

Using the symbols'S' and's' to represent signifier and signified, Lacan

 89

writes the formula in this way:

.§. (signifier) •

s (signified)

The formula is inverted because Lacan holds that the signifier has priority
over the signified, and that meanin~ is constituted throu~h the relation
between signifiers (Ecrits 1966:498;. Like Levi-Strauss (1950h Lacan would
argue that meaning is created by a chain of signifiers, that, in its
globability, created meaning 'd'un seul coup'. llhen the two global
registers (S/s) were created in that mythical cruci-formation to which
myths (collectively) and dreams (individually) bear witness, a 'supple­
mentary ration' was necessary to support Symbolic thought in its opera­
tions (Levi-Strauss 1950: xlix). For given that the two registers are
created simultaneously 'comma deux blocs complementaires!; 11 human thought,
impelled by the desire for recognition from the other, can only appropriate
otherness through a 'suplus of signification' that underpins its operations.
The wandering of the mind that, in the shape of 'the floating signifier',
draws from the actual the fuel necessary to feed the symbolic, is also
that wandering that subverts any constant fbi-univocal' relatioribetween
signifier and signified. This is completely in accord with De Saussure's
rejection of language as 'a name-giving system' (1974:16) or 'a list of
words, each corresponding to the thing it names' (1974:65). Such a theory
of 'labelling' would imply that the signified was a thing in itself rather
than a concept, and that implication would be anathema to Lacan as to De
Saussure.

Lacan is, however, actually concerned to modify De Saussure. He

rejects the Saussurean illustration of the relation eXisting between
signifier and.signified because it suggests to us that 'the sig.aifier
anS1'lerS to the function of representing the signified' (Ecrits 1966: 498).
Lacan insists that 'the signifier intrudes into the signified' (Bcrits
1966:500). By this, he means that 'meaning' .. inhereB· .in (metonymic.
and meta~horic) relations between signifiers, which are both ever~There and
nowhere (since relations are 'nowhere'). Rather than being a 'representa­
tion', 'meaning' in Lac~nian Psychoanalysis seems to be a ~uestion of
'production'. Meaning is produced out of a difference that separates 'the
letter' (ie. 'the essentially localized structure of the signifier') from
'a necessary topological substratum' ''fhich Lacan compares to an infinite
series of interlocking rings in a necklace1'There each necklace is itself
also a ring in another n~cklace (Ecrits 1966:501-502). How are we to
understand this metaphor?· .

llilden argues that vrhen Lacan I'efers· to 'a necessary topological

substratum' he means to imply the phonological level of the Unconscious.
If Lacan is concerned here with that level at vrhich phonemes can finally
be dissolved into distinctive features, and Lacan's text is not absolutely
clear on this point, then it is illumina:tiogto r~late i~ to Levi-Strauss'
programmatic statements on the relation betv-Ieen structural Linguistics
and Social Anthropology (1972: eh. 2, 3, 4, 9, 11). Even as· Levi-Strauss
was formulating the parallel between the phonemic sti"ucture of language,
and the structures of 'languages' such as kinship rules.and myths, he
realized that the analogy was a flavred one. Even if it:was possible to
reduce social 'languages' to ~conscious systems.ofrelations, the units
one was concerned with remained words and not 'distinctive. features',
and as Levi-Strauss noted:· "there are no necessary relationships at
vocabulary level" (1972: 35/36). .
,. . .'
The relation, then, between linguistic te~jffi and kinship terms,
is not simple. If they are formally the same, if they can both be said
 90

to be produced by a Symbolic Function (1972:203), yet they are fina~ly

terms existing at a different leval. This is partly because any language
beyond the reduced language of Psychosis is necessarily always alre~dy
in a social world organized in terms of certain key-signifiers. The
clumsiness of expression here is partly due to the impossibility of
describing a language in a reduced state. Lacan's version of the Fort!
Da!~ame played by Freud's grandson (Beyond the Pleasure Principle EP.
8-10) treats it as an initial entrance into a Jakobsonian world of phonemic
opposition~. Thecorellation between the ,presence and absence of the
child's mother, and the child's 'symbolic'use of the two phonemes ~o/a)
to locate 'himself within such a 'difference t , has been quite fiercefY
attacked (Wilden 1972:147-.;152). Here I want only to note how it is1that
Laeanian Psychoanalysis is concerned to describe the quite specific
entrance of the child into the Symbolic Order, a re-capitulation of 'that
veftiginous 'moment' in which the two reigsters (S/s) were created p
their globality (Levi-Strauss: 1950). 'Of course Lacan is always in ~ place
from which he stresses the 'exterio:dty', of the Symbolic Order, \'1hether
it be the circulation of value in a Melanesian chain of islands, orithe
$amecirctilation between boudoirs and hotel-rooms in 19th Century Paris.
Indeed,: ,Lacan 'would consider the couple Exter:i.ority/Interiority to be "
quite spuriouS ,as can be Seen by noting his various references to ~evi­
Strauss. The 'alread;y-there t quality of the Symbolic Order is invariably
affirmed, the Freudian Oedipus re-inserted as a mere moment of a wiAer
~ystem that is.either present or absent:

liThe marriage tie'is' presided over by a preferential or~er

whose law implying the kinship names, like Language,
is imperative for the group in its forms, but unconsciQus
in its structure." (1966: 276-277 Wilden's translation).
Lacan, in typical style, then proceeds to dissolve any speci~icity
't;hat European post-Industrial kinship organization'may appear to have, by
$ituating ,it within the wider modalities of alliance and descent a~ they
have been described in the ethnography: ' ,
"This is precisely where the Oedipus complex -,insofar
as we continue to recognize it as covering the whole
field of our experience with its signification - may
be said, in this connection, to mark the limits 'that olfr'
discipline assigns to subjectivity: that is to say whaithe
subject can lcnow of his unconscious 'participation in the
movelusnt, of the .complex structures of marriage ties, ,by
verifying the symbolic effects in his individual exist+
ence of the tangential movement towards incest which li$.s
,manifested itself ever since the coming of a universal
, commUnity," , (1966:277\filden's translation) ,
. . . . . .. . .

This seems ac,ceptable e~ough, but in another context (1966: 219) , "in which
~a:canis re-analysing the, case of Dora, this dissolution ,itself begins to
~ppearsuspect. The cycle of exchange of presents, with 'all their under­
tones of cynical seXual purchase, that envelops Dora in a struct'ure of bad
faith that she also fails to discern, cannot be so easily wt'enchedfrom
the specific historical context. I mention this case because it is not
so often that Lacan' s Levi-Straussian formulations can,be con'sidered in a
,concretehist.oricalcontext, and it is only then that one can decide to
'what extent Lacan is guilty of the ''violence of reducing the cultural
,. (ie historical) to the ontological"" (vaIden 1972) . ' ..
Moreover, if Lacan learnt so much from the early LeVi-Strauss, he
rarely attempted a formal analysis of the kinds practised by Levi-Strauss
in the early essays on· myth and on kinship.' It is partly for this, reason
 91

(a reason related to Psychoanalysis as a therapy concerned with the'

structure of intersubjectivity) that Lacan ha.s never been so absolutely

tied to a Structuralist formulation in terms of binary oppositions.

Certainly the Oedipus has been correlated with the now largely discredited

"atom of kinship', but the con-fusions of the Imaginary and the Symbolic
that the subject is caught within in '~he Psychoanalytic discourse, have
tended to help Lacan to avoid adopting a reductive position. This is not
a defence that would be accepted by Wilden (1972) or Deleuze and Guettari
(1973). My own position on this is rela.ted to my (as yet) incomplete '
situation of Oedine Africain (1966:1973) with regard to Lacanian Psycho­
analysis and Social Anthropology. It is there, in formulating a critique
of tne work of the Ortigues, rather than in momentary allusions to Levi­
strauss in Lacan's Ttlritings, that some resolution of these matters is to
be found.
Lacan justifies his emphasis on the signifier by referring us to De
Saussure and to certain of his explanations of the arbitrariness of the
linguistiC sign. DeSaussure talked or 'Ie glissement incessant du sig­
nifie sous Ie signifiant' ('the incessant sliding of the signified beneath
the signifier') and this point has been much stressed by Lacan (Ecrits
1966:502-503). For Lacan, the signified becomes less and less important
simply because it e-ludes us, it slips playfully away from us. The in­
trus.ion of the signifier into the signified can also be phrased in terms
of the subversion of the subject that Lacanian theory demands. Just as
it is impossible to allow the subject to bathe in tl~ radiance of his
own thought, as'it constitutes him as present to himself, so also is it
&.ibiws to regard language and thought as being in the service of some
perfectly calibrated celestial machine. It is not that Lacan fails to
distinguish between thought and language (Bar 1971: 246). He is concerned
however with the (metonymic) movement of language and the progressive­
regressive movement of desire that is invested in it, with the (meta­
phorical) blossoming as the chain is momentarily suspended, and that which
is'suspended from it, intrudeS.

In the section on the mutability of the linguistic sigh (1974: 74-78),

De Saussure writes of a loosening of the bond between the acoustic image
and the concept, ofa shift in the relationship between the two. Ris'
examples are of changeS between Old German and Modern Gennan, or between
Classical Latin and French (viZ: the Latin 'necare', to kill, becomes the
French 'noyer', to drown). These are obviously changes taking place over
long periods of time, indeed whole centuries, The inference, however, as
far as Lacan is concerned, is quite clear:

"Language is radically pOvlerless to defend itself against

the ,forces which from one moment to the next are shifting
the relationship between the 'signified and the signifier".
, (1974:75 mv'italics) ,
It is the 'change from one moment to the next' in ·the relation bet~'1een
signifier and signified that allot-IS Lacan· to superimpose Saussurean lin­
guistics on the Freudian dream-text. The dream-text is'afinely spun
web (note that the Latin word 'textum' = 'web') of linguistic 'inter­
connections: yet analysis cannot exhaust it. Analysis of a dream is
indeed 'interminable'. However, at certain points, the wOrk is halted,
comes up against 'nodal points' which are, in Freud's.words, 'un­
pluininable'. For Lacan,these nodal points are points at vlhich the two
registers (S:s) are anchored to each other: 'he describes them,as
'points de capiton',as raised buttons on a mattress or armchair. These
'points de capitan' are the place at which need is re-presented in psy­
chi<;:al life, and in achoring the two ", chains' to each other t they bring
 92

to ahalt'the othervlise indefinite sliding of meaning' (Bcrits 1966 :805).

Lacan compares ,the analyst to a fisherman who is fishing 'in the flow of
the pre-text', 'but who cannot hope to catch the actual movement of the
fish. ,The'signified is marked here with a bar (viz p) because it is
always disappearing into ,the organic, into the 'insondable'. If Lacan 12
here does seem to confuse the Saussurean concept with the thing itself
this is only because, in defining the real as that which isreal for the
subject, Lacan would align himself here with Benveniste and (1966: 49-56)
circumscribe Edm~d, the bastard son, within the hegemony of the dog­
,star he answers even in his denial of it. The real is an orphan Un­

conscious: the real is a ,necklace threaded with'stars. " ,

Lacan's treatment of the Saussurean signifier/signified relation is

highly idiosyncratic. It hinges around the significance of the bar separ­
ating the two registers Insofar as De Saussure is concerned with Syn­
chronic relations'alone 13 , the bar is simply that which separates the
acoustic chain from the concept. lrhen De Saussure talks of the linear
..nature of the signifier, he stresses that the signifying chain is linear
" because it can only unfold in one dimensioth that of time (1974:70). The
Freudian Unconscious is timeless: this is one ·of its most b~sic properties,
and that on its own would seem to render the presence of a linear chain in
the unconscious unlikely. Indeed,. given the various kinds of regression
involved in the dream-work, and given the presence of Thing-Presentation
in the Unconscious, we would seem to be far closer to De Saussure's
consideration of semiological systems that are visual. Visual si~ifiers
can 'offer simultaneous groupings in several dimensions' (1974:70), De
Saussure writes, and here one is immediately reminded of Freud's descrip­
tion of the 'transcription' of signs from system to, system (1954:173-175).
This is really,the 'kernel' of the problem, and must be approached with
great caution. For Lacan, the language that is present in the Unconscious
is that uhich is spoken by the 'mass of human beings'. On the other hand,
Freud himself, in his description of the memory-system, repeatedly invoked
the metaphor of a script, of writing, present in the Unconscious. In
this context, his references to pictographic and ideographic scripts in
the Interpretation of Dreams should be taken quite seriously. The point
is ,this: we canthUL~ of the Unconscious in terrls of a spoken language
or a written language, or in terms of both. Each of these decisions would
still allow for that necessary continuity between Unconscious and Pre­
conscious. In discussing Lacan's position it is, I think, dangerous,
to place him too simply within the kind of logocentrism attacked by
. Derrida (1967/1972). This is vlilden' s argument .(1972: 396fn.) and I
think it represents an over-simplification both of Derrida and of Lacan.
The highly complicated argument and diagrams that try to evoke the
process that Lacan calls 'capitonnage' (Ecrits 1966:804-809) are, I
would argue (and insofar as, I understand Lacan's text), against any
complicity with the utopian plenitude of an absolutely present orig~n,
whether as signifier, subject, or both. If Lacan's final point of
reference is with phonology, nevertheless, in his insistence that the
signifying chain is to be read bac~lards as well as forwards, is in4eed
finally sealed up in its meaning by that l'1hich is not yet and is yet '
retroactively already there, he is not so far from defining the psychic
as 'text' (Eerits 1966:805).' .. " , .
" As I have said, the bar in Lacan' s system repres,ents the repress ion
of thesigni,fied. In De Saussure it has no such value, but is simply the
line that separates the two chains. However,; Psychoanalysis is continually
concerned1rlith the fact that the relations between the different agencies
,of, the ,mind are a kind of flawed semiology. ThePrec'onscious and 'the Un­
conscious are both related and separated at the same 'time. There is a
'censorship' separating them, and yet: commUnication between them does
exist. Indeed it must, if we are to avoid that 'Psychoparallelism'
 93
against which Freud warned us. If certain passages (following the image
of Russian censorship) are blacked out, there are aspects (ie 'derivatives')
of the original text that can still be deciphered in spite of the oblitera­
tions on either side. Thus, the pure linearity of the signifying chaip.,
as De Saussuredescribed it, has to be modified so as to include the iP.­
trusions of another chain that liea beneath it and insists that it be '
read:
"There is in effect no signifying chain lvhich does not
have attached to the punctuation of each of its units
a 1'lhole, articulation of relevant context suspended '
vertically from that point" (DJcrits 1966:503) (Jan Miel's
translation)

This 'other' chain that lies beneath, and is suspended vertically ('si
l,'on peut dire' :Lacan) from particular points, is composed of signifiers
that have fallen to the rank of signifieds. To understand exactly what
is meant by this, we have to look at the connection between tietaphor a~d
Repression. "

Metaphor and Repression

In Metaphor, as Lacan sees it, a new signifier replaces (re-places)

the original one. The ori~inalsignifier then falls to the rank of the
signified (Ecrits 1966:708). If we represent the new signifier asS',
we can explain the process diagrammatically:

STAGDJ I: STAGDJ II:

~ (original signifer) ~' (new signifier)

s (original signified) S (original signifier fallen
to the rank of the
signified) ,

To understand this diagram, we 'must remember that we are concerned noi; just
with the structure of language, and not just with a bar between signifier
and signified, but with Repression.' In a language without Repression,
things 1I0uld be as the, linguist describes them, but since Freud, we h~.'lTe
learnt that intrusions into the text of everyday life make STAGE I ~ a
pi,U'elyhypothetical caSj3: ' '. ' s

'In a language without metaphors, there would

indeed be relations of signifier to signified
, . (rapports de signifiant l!t signifie) which may
be symbolized by ~; but there would be no
equivocation, nor a~y unconscious to decipher'.
, (Ricoeur:1970:401)

Indeed, there is no 'original plenitude except in the'pre-texte' and ques­

tions about the 'pre-texte' receive only mythical answers. Lacan des...
cribes Repression asa snag or rip or rent in the cloth,of experience, and
such snags make it difficult to sustain a Structural Linguistics constructed
solely on the basis of a bar separating an acoustic chain from a con­
ceptual one. The general Freudian category of 'distortion' would seem
to demand some kind of acknowledgement, for it was Freud's achievement
in the monographs on dreams, jokes, and parapraxes, to show that there was
a. ],.oQu~,,:: of language to which the conscious subject was, in Lacan' s
word 'excentric'.
 94

Repression, for Lacan, 'is' metaphor~The snag in the tissue marks

the place \'lhere the original signifier is, as it were, vertically suspended.
It has been 'displaced' and has fa£len to the rarut of the signified.
However, 'although it has fallen (and the topographic nuance is, I think,
faithful to the process) it persists as a repressed signifier itself. This
persistence (and insistence) of a repressed chain is precisely what give
poetry, that most metaphorical of arts, the quality of saying what ,it ~ays
as much by what is not there as by what is. To hear the thing that is not
said beneath the thing that is, the basic attitude is One of phenomeno­
logical suspension of the kind described by Bachelard in his theory of:
reading, and attitude not so far removed from that advocated by Freud:
'the evenly suspended attention' •
. There is a slight problem involved in equating metaphor and Re­

pression. It is this~ If metaphor is seen as equated with repression,

the existence of a repressed chain suggests that, froID the whole para-'

.digmatic axis, only two elements are actually involved: (1) the new si~­
nifer(S') and (2) the original signifier fallen to the rank of the sig~
nified (S). Thus, whereas the paradigmatic axis is defined by the pos~
sible substitution of all its elements, one from another, the idea of re­
pression seems to endow certain signifiers with a more privileged posi~
tion than that of others along the paradigmatic axis. I think there i~
an answer to this. The quote from Ricoeur above (1970:401) reminded u$
that there is no language without metaphor. Similarly, we must remember
that except in the form of aphasia described by Jakobson as Contiguity
Disorder, there is no language without metonymy. Since metonymy connects
both the message and the code, it is the metonymic movement of language
that connects the repressed chain of signification to the rest of the
elements in the code. In Lacanian terms, this movement is the movement
of Desire, and it is quite literally the 'restlessness' of this desire
that Psychoanalysis imputes to language. If Lacan's position is valid
it represents a kind of subversion of the study of language (cf. Ecrit~
1966:467). It is within the practice of Psychoanalysis that Lacan's under­
standing of the workings of language is situated, and those linguists who
.. cr1ticizeLacan from the point of view of 'normal' lan5~ageare really'
missing the point. By this I mean that it IDay be more meaningful for :us
to reverse Lacan's aphorism:' 'Language is structured like the Unconscious'.
Lacan's wilful obscurity (and it is, in no ironical sense, precisely that)
is based on his belief that theory and practice should be unit ed, 'and the
primacy of the signifier over the signified results in a masking of sense
that only diligent work can unveil. .

Another approach to the prob+em of the fixity that the metaphor!

repression equation seems to ascribe to the workings of language, is that
developed by Laplanche ~d Leclaire (1961) in their analysis of Phillipe's
dream. They argue that the persistence and insistence of a repressed
chain demands representation in terms of 4 levels instead of the 2 levels
shown to us by De Saussure.
These four levels, divided up into what Laplanche and Leclaire·call
the Preconscious and Unconscious Chain, can be represented like this:
The Preconscious Chain

~ The Unconscious Chain

S
 95

This formula does give a ,highlyul;let'ul r~I>resent,:~tionot' the, relation

between the Preconscious and,the UnconscioUl:l, and it does allow us' to 'make
a close correlation, topograp:hicallyrepresented, be"j.;1'1een metaphor a~1d <

repression. In fact this diagram's meaning cannot be grasped until we '

have looked at Freud's writings on the nature of Repr~ssion. We will
also have to discuss the q~estionof the (fictitious) origin of the Un:
conscious and its relations to language. Until w~ have tackled this, ,
the meaning of the lower half of the diagram, w'here 'I'Ie have a signifie9­
that ,is apparently its own signifier, can only elude us. '

Repression

If the formulation of the concept of the Unconscious was the crucial

event in the history o,f Freudian Psychoanalysis, Repression 1'/'as also a
concept that was indispensable to it.Stekel, be it noted, abandoned the
concept of the Unconscious, and' also Repre'ssion too - 'the cornerstone
on 'I'lhich the 1'lhole structure of Psychoanalysis rests' (SE XIV: 16). In
discussing this • cornerstone' ~ my key points of reference are to the two
papers on the Unconscious and on Repression of 1915 (Sill XIV) \

In talking about Repression we are concerned "lith relations betvIeen

the systems" of the mind as Freud defined them - between the Ullconscioufl
and the Preconscious, aqd between the Preconscious and the Conscious. We
have already looked at the relations bet't'reen these systems in ternis of
presentations, in terms of 'w'ord-presentations' and'thing-presentatio:qs',
and have shown how persuasively the terminology of Structural Linguist~cs
has been used to describe these concepts.

The fact is that Repression, although described by Freud at one point

as 'a failure in translation', demands some kindof·use'of energetic t~rms.
The initial definition. inthe,,1915 Paper -that 'the essence of repres~ion
lies simply in turn;i.ngsomething av-lay, ,andkeepi:ng it at a distance from
the conscious' (SID XIV: 147) ~,is quite· a, mild expression of the force with
which acellsorshipmust be invested.
, ,

Fr~ud divides' H.~pressio~ int'o two. ph~ses, (l}priml;tlUepres~io~1 and

(2) Ilepli$ssion Proper. Since Repressi on Proper' (or Aft.er .Repression) is
~ekindweare\lsuallyconcerned with, I have chosen to treat that fiIlst.

Repression Proper

In Repression Proper, the pres~ntation '·1hioh.is repressed. is affected

by two different 'forces'. It is, ,firstct' all, repulsed b~Tthe Pre­
consc:i,ous system, ,and' cathexis' is withdravm. Secondly it isattrac1;ed
bya chain ~lreadyexisting in the Vnconscious (the repressed chain of
signification ;i.e •.,2 in the . diagram above). , Thus, . a repres$ed chain to
.' , . '. :' S. ,.' .' , ,,,' .' "
which it· is i3.ttracted. Some.explanation then ha~. to be made for priml;tl
repre$sion. To uriderstand the relation between 'Repression Proper' and
this' 'Pri12ialRepression ' it has to be accepted that our reconstruction of
it is necessarily. a fictitious one •. This is not as problematicl;ts it might
seem~ vfe can only treat an origin as a fiction because an origin is.an
entity that eludes the s·tructuresof thought, tha.t ",e t'1ouldusetocontain
it, precisely because the ori~in. of pur.strl,\ctuxesof:tlJ.ought is th~ dark
side of-those structures, and it is in opposition to' that dark side,
through repression of it, that those structures claim their'right to exist.

Primal Repression
, t·, ..

Rowever, Fr~ud ,las intensely preoccupied with the. prob;I,ern of or~gJ.Ils,

a preoccupation that on occasion overrides his moreSaussureanconcerns ..
 96
i , : ! - _

,In the case of Prima],: Repression, since it,is~o'closelY concerned with

, the, t~ntranqe' of. the drive into psychical life, it is espec:j,aliy inter­

estine to F~eud.' Ifth~~ primal repression happens ~'at least a~ a mythi­

cal event - 'then we havf tq postulate a kind ofraythioalstate prior to'

the splitting up of the 'mind into systems. ' This mythical st~te is 'I

apprehende4 not thr()Ugh' experimtmtal psycho10 ,€ "y ,nor, th;rOutm'psychO­

linguistic¢l.' Qut throU€

.'f -
ll ,-."the archaeology
. ' ; _
of -~he
',
subject
. _.
th~tPsych~

", ' .,,, . . _ '.

-~

analysis lays bare' f0:l;, 1'-~~ ,:( A mythic~l ,eventc.ann9~ beJ)t'0v~!,1 as' true or

r \ " I - ' .

false: it is irreducible r to that kind 6f measurement." '"

j .
'f
~
'.

• B~j"efJ,y, wha11 happens ill the Primal Repress! on is this ~. The ps;y­
,9:hical(or ideati~mal) J.4epresenta~iveis refused ent;,ancetothe psychic
appa~a~us. 11. fi.;atiQn is '~hen established,-, 'the represEmtatiire'in question
p~rsi~;ts lltlalter~g. from thenO~"'firds,and the,Jnstinct (dr,iv~) reInains '
jittacbftdtoitt"{'SE X~:l~e)~", 1:7ith tbi~ '£'ixation,the ins,tinct (drive)
acced~stothe le\re;J.9:fthe,si~nifier,or: 'f is'caU(ih~ in or the sig­ nets.
nifier"(LapHmch~ and Leclaire: ,,'lS6~). 'The idea of fiX,a:tio~l expressed',
here, since1't so explic:ltly suggests ~n immutabiliti~ 'can be compared
to Freudts'model of theJll~i1.d asa 'writing-machine' on to "those' mnemic'
Sy~tems traces ar~ 'inscr~bed' or 'registered'. ' ',:
• >"' Y:;.
" f'j." r ,J!:f.
." "", .:.-". -: .;

OF' It isthe ideati~~ai~epr~sentativesof sexUS:lity a~d ofd~ath that

are fiJeed inprimal;:Repression.' Ernest Jones' claim that there are' certain
J,i~ited symbolis~srela~ing to life, death, one's kinsmen, and one's"
,'body, (J.9l6/1923), can only be related to the dODiain of Primal Repression,
~ privileged arena whre ~he hieroglyphs are not washed away with each tide.
It is the privilege4 nature of this arena that lends subs~ance to the
. a.rgu1¥ents of Derrida. (1967/1972) and of Deleuze a+ld Gueti;ari (1973), '
, "regardil18' the primacy 0:t:~, th~ written (the traced) ° over the spoken. \1hen
I have, described the pr~Wl}l repression in more strictly Lacaniantcrms"
I ~ill return to this question of the trace and ~~iting, and the prob~
J;ematic relation bet,·reen the phonetic and the 'grWninatic'.·· " .
~, • ;~;, ",:.;:"'. .j -.,~ ,;
!, ' : ' 1 ; ' ,,' :.,

,·'1
 97

Phillipe as a child who simply: ex'isted 1'1ithin the non-signifying 1'lOrld of

his own need. In this (mythical) time., to have thirst is simply to engulf
in a blind need which is then satisfied. Suddenly, with 1ili's joking
remark 'Phillipe-J' ai-soif', the world be,comes significant, and what had
been a blind instinctual impulse is caught 'in the nets of the signifier'.
This is illustrated diagrammatically:

Lin says:

Phillipe, S'
J' ai SOIF
s

Undifferentiated
instinctual (drive)
energy S
; soi!
soif
S

Thus '(J'ai)soif' is one of the 'kernels' of Phillipe's Unconscious. The

work of analysis, in its untiring elimination of the outer husk, will
always come up against this 'knot of signification'. It is a 'point of
umbilication' (1acan) because it is so radically over-determined. Thus,
it should be noted that Phillipe's memory is of 1ili saying"J'ai soif'.
His 'insertion into the Symbolic Order occurs, then, through the mediation
of another whose name (1ili/'1010': breast, milk in French baby talk)
invokes his dual relation with his mother. However, it is also significant
tl!Iat the name '1ili' was not Phillipe' s aunt's name a t all, but me rely the
affectionate nickname by which she was known by her husband, and by her
husband alone. Thus" the desire to drink, around which Phillipe' s dream
is organized, is multiply over-determined. Besides the desire to drink,
we are concerned with Phillipe's desire for 1ili, 1ili's own desire to
drink, and finally, and most significantly, 1i+i's desire for her husband.
Since Phillipe was one of those children who said, 'moi-je' (ie. he had not
mastered, the use, of 'shifters') the ,formula 'Jai soif' signified the diZZy
momE;lnt in which he was to move away from a,sit,uation of narcissiElm, '"
an
1'Jl1ere 1ili/lolo waEl merely extensi.on of his being, to a Symbolic Order
which placed the other under the slid~ng'mark of the Other{L'Autre)~,;"
If it was 1ili, who, was the ~ediating force in this tr~nsformation~that,
would have been because it would make sense that an other shOUld 'break'
the spell of.the dual relation With the mother and ope;n up·an order
organized ,'in, terms oia.n Oedipal structure of three separate persons.
In such ,a, structure, peing is not a narci?sis'tic closure (ie. 'moi-je'),
but a locus, of subjectivity which cannot be appropriated;'However,
regression from the Symbolic to the Imaginary is always posElible. For,
as need is transformed into desire through demand, the radical lack of
being of the child whose organism has been, altered (from a calyx of bright,
only partially centralized slivers of light, into the fused silver of a
total mirror-recognition), is re-ihscribed at the level of the signifier
whose aleatory movement alone invokes the flaw it labours to conceal.

Indeed, if the formula '(J'ai) soif' is able to act as the kernel

of the dream, if it is so heavily over-deter~ined, it is because even ,
primal repression does not finally cut off the 'derivatives', of the r~~
pressed representative of the drive. If there is sufficient, 'distortion'
for the 'derivatives' to overcome the censorship then they have free
access to the preconscious and conscious, and in the process of free
association Freud notes (SE XIV: 149-150) that the analysand goes on
 98

spinning associative threads ttill he is'brought up against some thought,

t4e relation of which to what 'is repressed becomes so obvious that he is
compelled to repeat his
. attempt. at repression'.
.", .

, In Phillipe "s dream we can identify some of the deriva tives of the
instinctual representative '(J'ai) soif". In the manifest text of Phillipe's
dream the word 'placet appears. Here is how this particular signifier can
be related diagrammatically to what is suspended vertically from' it:

Lili says:' ..

Phillipe,

Jtai soif

st 'S t place
1..... Pcs.
s s "
scene

, In ~hisdiagram tole are concerned with the four-tiered formula again,

and with metaphor (repression) as the superimposition of signifiers. The
newsignifiet '(place) is superimposed on to the original signifier ,p,lage,
which has fallen :to the rank of the signified. The signified is the'
, , scene (scene) where :theaction 'takes place and here of course it is 'con­
fus'~d' with the original signifier plage. Our problem is one of concept­
ualiiz,ing a four-tiered system in terms of a terminology rooted in a two­
tieredsignifei-!signified system.' As ~ve have already noted,since all
language involves me,taphor (repression), there 'Ivil1 be no language' '
that is not underPinnedbya repressed chain of signification. The
rad~cal condensation ,that' we detect in: the dream-work is in 'fact then,
the result of the crossing of the Saussurean bar' between the language of
con!3cious ahd prec'onscious and that operating in the repressed chain,
C. ondensation operates, as it ~vere, vel'tically, between a signifier and
" another, signifier that has failen to the 'rank of the signified. 'C.on­
den$ati~nis then' a feature of language that is never completely there, ,
but exists somewhere between the work of distortion andthel'lOrk of, '
int~rpretat~on, the latter in its guile 'simply revers1ngthe former:

"The creative spark oithe metaphor' does not spring ,

from the conjUnction of tl'lO. 'images, 'that is 'of two
signifiersactually actualized. It sprl.ngs from two
sigl1ifiers one of which has taken the' plade of the
'other in the signifying chain, the hidden signifier
theri remaining present throughits (metonymic)
relation to the rest of· the chain t. " "
, (La6an :Ecrits 1966: 507; Mial' S'
translation) •

The important point to note here'is that the operations'ofmetaphor

and metonymy are mutually interdependent,aswas emphasized in the dis­
, cussion on Jakobson. · I f metaphor createS a' superirriposiHon of signifiers,
metonymy effects a continual sliding of signifiers: it is' the one slope
of the effective field of the signifier iilthe constitution of meailing'
(, 1e premior versant' duchamp effectifque 'ie signi'f'iant constitue, pour
que Ie sens y pre-nne place"Ecrft'sI966:506).Thepointis that metonymy,
 99

for Lacan, concerns .only the relations between signifiers, it does not
concern the signified at all, for the signified is contin~ally slipping
away from underneath.

\le can understand the nature of metonymy better by returning to

the diagrammatic representation of Phillipe's dream. I have already,
attempted,a description of the (fiction of) primal repression. I have
also shmm how it is that a signifier such as place exists by virtue of
a signifier that it has displaced - plage. Or, to put it in another way,
we have seen how the original signifier plage is in a metaphorising posi­
tion with regard to the signifyi~s chain 'above' it. Since we are con­
cerned with what Freud calls the 'derivatives' of the repressed instinctual
(drive) representative, we need to trace the ,connections bet~leen the right
and left haild side of the diagram •.

Freud's initial point in separating out the two different kinds of

repression was quite simply a logical one. If it was argued that, for
repression to occur, the 'presentation' (signifier) had not only to be
repulsed by the Preconscious, but also to be attracted by a chain already
existing in the Unconscious, then a Primal Repression had to be hypothesised.
The associative chains connect the already existing chain in the Unconscious
to the (distorted) derivatives of the repressed instinctual representative
around vnlich the Unconscious chain is organized.

Thus, when 1ie have undone the work of distortion we find the original
signifier/signified relation p~age. The last syllable 'gel is phonetically
scene
related to the 'jet in the 'J'ai soif' of the Unconscious chain. We can
postulate a metonynlic sliding to the left of the diagram, from .:glage to
plage
~~ to ..i2 and so to (J'ai) soif. Here, then, is the --completed diagram,
-ge je

Lili says:

Phillipe,

J'ai soif

S' S' place

r--~------------~----
;io..
Pos.
S i S stene
1---....,..----. metaphor - - - - ­
. . Ii -ge S{,· ---". S plage
_..;;s;.;:o;.;:i;::f:.-.{·_·-=_''-'"",;&o;:e...'-_:.._.-'_,_·,_- ·;,.;.,I, Ucs.
soif ~._. je \,
-~ S<.:._ _.:.:.._- s' BIage
(- ~~
r,lIETONYMY

Conclusion

One crucial question remains ~o be considered. I cannot answer it,

lcan only highlight my own confusions, and my feeling that the Lacanian
problematic is, at this point, seriously flawed. The crucial question,
and one that I have not ceased to ask in different ways throughout'the
paper is, this: \1hat is the nature of the 'language' (§.) in the Unconscious
.,,' S
Chain? Here is how Laplanche and Leclaire conclude:
 100

"The '1t19rds' that compose:it:are eleDle-nts dral'1n from the

realm of the im.~C;inary - nQ~ablyfrom vis'lla1 informa- .
tion - but promoted to the dignity of signifiers."
(1972:182)

Vlhat seems clear tIJ.en is thatwe':qave:1;othink of a Primal Unconscious

(establiEihed by Primal Repression) , ,and also an Unconscious which is the

'domain of After Repressi, on. It seems to me tllat the Primary/Secondary

Processdistinction14 'isnot adequ:ate to contain the series of 'levels'
that. ,this ,demands.
To understand the distinction between these two forms ,of Unconscious,
I 1tlantto consider briefly a paperwritten by B~nveniste on the relation
between Psychoanalysis and Language. ,He offers two meanings of the word
'symbolic' the first one as defining 'the most manifest property of Language',
that it 'symbolizes' things in their absence. Lacan's own account of the
Fort~ Da! game, and the phoneticization of the real involved in the child's
use of toys as signifiers, corresponds to, precisely this sense of the
word 'symbolic'. .
Benveniste compares this most basic proper~y6f natural language

with lithe symbolism of the Unconscious discovered l)y,F~eud, 1"1hich offers

characteristics 'qUite specific to itself" (1966:85). vie are concerned

here with the heritage of Stekel, a dangerous heritage as Freud had been

quick to point out (sm IV). We are concerned with a tfixedSymbolism'.

(Die '. Symbolik). A careful reading of The Intepretation of Dreams and

an attention to the dates at which certain passages were added, will"

reveal a gradual transformation in Freud's though~. The sections on

fixed Symbolism were more and more extended, until his express warnings

against the over-indulgent use of them, are all but buried under a mound

.of sue;gestions (for possibly universal symbolisms) from his cO-1"1prkers,

and indeed from himself. However, in a note dated 1909, Freud insists
that the consideration of Symbols should never be carried out separately
from free association:

"l should like to utter an express warning. against over­

estimating the importance of symbols in dream-interpreta­
tion, against restricting the work of translating dreams
merely to translating symbols, and against abandoning
the technique of making use of the dreamer's associations"
"" " .... " ,., " . (SE IV)

If the free association can be considered to be that work done by the

analysand in following the threads 'in the' manifest dream-text to the

laj;ent dream-tl).qughts, it would still seem to be in the domain of After­

Repression.' What, then of the fixed SYmbolism?

Ernest Jones, in one,of :the key papers on the subject, claimed

that "all symbols represent ideas of· the self and the immediate blood
relatives, or of the phenomena of birth, love and death" (1923: 169).
Since Lacan's whole work has been concerned with an emphasis on the lack
of fixity in language, he has naturally militated against a too great
reliance on any theories of fixed Symbolism, Stekelian theories that
Freud had effectively rejected in his initial discussions of 'ai-chai'c'"
methods of dream interpretation. Even the symptom is shown to be partici­
pant in the chain of s'ignifiers,if only negatively, ina frozen violence
that both' hides and reveli.1sthe text suspended from it (Ecrits1966:259).
However, in an intere~ting,tr'ibute to Ernes'i,Jones (1966:697-717), we ,
find certain cluest6 Lacan"s theoretical position. In general, as I
hope I have shown in this paper, Lacan iafar' more 'concerried '1"1ith Le
SymboliQ'J.e than ~litha :t:i,~ad symbolism. l.nd~ed, insof~ras he accepts
 101

a fixed symbolism he seems to equate it with those 'key-signifiers' that

organise the insertion of the subject into language as the primal re­

pression happens. Lacan writes of symbols in terms of primary ideas:

"Ces idees primaires designent les points au Ie

sujet dispara:lt sous 1 "E,tre du significant: cu' i 1
s 'agisse, enseffet, d '~etre soi, d 'etre un p~re,
d 'etre ne, d' etre aime, au d' ~\i;re mort" (1966: 709)

Thus, Phillipe, and his 'disappearance' beneath the signifier 'soif'.

However, if these 'primary ideas' are crucial to the insertion of the
subject into the Symbolic Order, can they really be said to be 'signifiers'
themselves? Are they not, rather, as much part of the Imaginary as the
Symbolic, thing-presentations in face 'elevated to the dignity of signifiers'?
If they are Imaginary elements, are they not, as Benveniste argues,
'Infra-linguistic', because they have their source 'in a region deeper than
that in which education instills the mechanism of language' (1966:86)?
Certainly, the domain of primal repression in its timelessness and lack
of syntax, and in the production of desire that operates there (in the
shape of Kleinian partial objects) would seem to be 'infra-linguistic'.
Whether it is possible, however, to imagine a language of inscriptions,
a system of writing, of traces, at this instance of the Unconscious, which
nevertheless insists so strongly because it persists, and because all
'derivatives' are traced back to it, is another question. 'What mu~t the
psychic be' Derrida asks 'for it to be a text?' (1967/1972)

Almost everyone discussing Lacan's conceptualization of the Unconscious

(15) has explicitly or implicitly produced this question that demands an

answer: an answer that losesitseH in the unplwmnable, What is this

domain, this 'infra-linguistic' domain, this Unconscious chain that gives

language 'ballast', this 'landscape of writing'? If we try to ente:r the

(mythical) time before primal repression, its phenomenology; its

libidinal production beneath the law of the Symbolic Father, do we find

a scrambling of several codes, an interpenetration of several 'chains', as

Deleuze and Guettari a:r;gue? (1973:47-48). For Derrida a1so, a writer

concerned to emphasise the metaphor of writing in Freud's writings against

the general hegemony of the Logos within the European tradition, the

Unconscious is marked by a 'writing' that pre-exists the phonetic - "not of

a 'writing' that simply transcribes the stony echo of muted words, but.of

a preverbal lithog:r;aphy: ,metaphonetic, non-linguistic, a-logical" (1972:85).

There is much evidence for such a system of writing in Freud '.s works, and it

'is especially insistent when he considers. the question of memory.·. This

writing is perhaps a writing 'straight out of the real', infra-lip.guistic
certainly, meta-phonetic, clearly, the infant's actually but latterly
c,elestial appropriation of every grove and stream. Noquarter,then.
Convulsive beSLuty: the phonemic operator •. That the signifier mp,!'Ks the
polymorphous meadows with a herald~c quartering, and imaginary figures
blaze still against the squaring of content (the ellipse, the flow Of the
pre-text), continuing.

It should be clear that. there is far more at stake in this debate

. than I have developed here. Whilst an adherence to phonoJogy allows us
to Slide all too easily into an idealism, an insistence on the. image of
inscription,. of ~riture, places us firmly within historical materialism,
and makes possible a conception of the Lacanian Symbolic as an exterior
register inscribed in the actual 'discursive practice' of the social
formation. The Lacanian Symbolic is always already there, it does pre­
cede and determine' any possible 'presence' of any possible 'subject'.
Yet, since Psychoanalysis has been concerned with ontogenesis, with a
personal myth of origin rather than a collective one, it will always tend
to fall back into an idealism. Dangerous myth of origin, then, the Fort:
Dal game. Dangerous to locate the materiality of the two registers only
in the tension between an original disappearance and a play of binary
oppositions supplementing the lack:
/
 102

"Through that which takes on body only by, being the trace
of,a nothingness and whose support from that moment on
cannot be impaired, the concept, saving the duration of
what passes bJr , engenders the thing". (Ecrits 1966:276;
, Wilden's translation)

If,pntogenetically, the latter is only a symptom of a nothingness (an

absence of the other pregnant with the threat located in the Other),
it has to be said that the Symbolic cannot be so easily emptied of the
Real,' (in the Marxist sense) that must, in the last instance, determine
it.', This is nO 'realist imbecility' (1966: 25), for it does not allow
the level at which meaning resides to elude it. It is merely an in~
sistence that the 'law' of the Symbolic be reinserted within the differ­
ential histories of the culture that made Psychoanalysis and Ethnography
posstble,and the cultures that were subjected to the actual violence of
its ~aze.
Martin Thom

Notes

1. Given the massive amount of. material by Lacan that is still to be

published, every reading is necessarily a very fragDlentar,y one.

2. A~ Annette Lavers has emphasised (Semiotika 1971), the break in Lacan's

thought should not be over-emphasised. Indeed, Psychoanalysis as
a,practice is so permeated with the Imaginary (ie. la parole vide
a~ symptomatic of meconnaissance) that it is unlikely .to fall prey
to the lure of an absolutely seamless Symbolic, aS~abolio that
wquld be in that measure itself an Imaginary (ie. an Ideological)
imposition. The Hegelian category of Desire that Lacan has utilized
so convincingly to illuminate FreUd's thought tends to militate, against
~y 'structuralist' closure of the phenomenological dimension.

3. Thus, Levi-Strauss (1950), in a paper that was both influenced by

Lacan, and in turn influenced him, argued that the old phenomenological
problem of the opposition between self and other could be resolved by
r~sorting to the Unconscious. This statement (which calls to mind
bQth Surrealism and the Lacanian conception of 'truth') is applied
'to the ethnographic situation in an Idealist manner. Idealist
b(i!cause it dehistoricizes the encounter beh'eenself and other, and
r~solves it by reference to a transcendent domain where a human
e~sence is eter~lly in residence.

4. This is where I differ from Wilden (1972). He rejects the idea that
t~ere is 'anything particularly specific about psychoanalysis except
insofar as it is a historical product of a certain type of socio­
economic system' (1972:450). It is very hard to situate Wilden poli­
tically, but I consider that his emphasis on the digital, logocentric,
phallocentric, patriarchal etc. nature of Lacanian Psychoanalysis
blinds him to the power that inheres in it to unmask ideologies,
including that which is ideological in· its own construction.
5.' viz. "Freud and Lacan" in Lenin and Philosophy 1971, pp. 189-221.
6. The tone is deliberately hesitant. 'Reading Lac an, from a distance,
with no real kno'Vrledge.of his writing,s beyond the Ecrits, any other
attitude than caution would be foolish. I am referring to Laplanche's
 103

.'. ;

6. 1965 postscript to the' .1961 article (I'rritten jointly vIi thLeclaire),

to his book, La Vie et r·1ort en Psychanalyse (1970), and also, in

slightly different fields, to Derrida (1967/1972), and Deleuze

and Guettari (1973).

' ..7"., Much Anthropological, :f.ielcI-work has been marred by its insensitivity
to the free associations of the dreamer (cf. The Dream in Primitive
Culture: Lincoln 1935:99). Even so Lacanian a work as Oedipe Africain
is not absolutely' sensitive to the linguistic situation.

8. The use of the word 'text' here is merely a recognition of the fact

that Phillipe's 'dream-text' is presented typographically. This is

in no way meant to pre-judge the status of the dream as 'text', for

this paper is in fa'ct centrally concerned vIith the rival claims of

a linguistics based on phonetics, and a 'graphematics still to come'

(Derrida 1972:104). .

9. Indeed, it was the ego-driyes that were transformed into ~he death­

drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (SEXVIII).

10 •...But c. f ~ Benveniste 1939: 49-56.

11. The phrase is from Levi-Strauss (1950), but Lacan also refers to the
sis relation as being that of two registers, 'Ie mot registre designant
~c~ deux enchainements pris dans leur globalite' (Ecrits 1966:444).
He insists that there is nb bi-univocal (ie term to term) relation
involved, but o111y that of register to. register.

12. But cf. Ecrits 1966:705 - 'Ie rapport du r~el au pens6e n'est pas

celui du signifi~ au signif-iant' •. '

13. De Saussurewas quite sensitive about,the methodological necessity of

separating the study of Synchronic from Diachronic relations. It was
not, finally, an ontological judgement ( cf • ArdeneI' 1971: xX:l>.rviii-xxxix).

14. Wilden's (1972) superimposition of ,the analog/digital distinction on

to the Primary/Secondary Process distinction seems to me also far

too blunt a strategy. If I have not discussed the general conclusions

of the 1972 book.withrega~d.to Lacan, -it is;because I am not happy

with the way the analog/digit'al distinctibn is used, and it seems to

me that there is a certain violence present in the reduction of the

Lacanianto the. Batesonian., . Having·. said· that ,. I should add that I

consider the translation and commentaries' in the' Language of the Self

to be very fine, and that I no longer have any way of ascertaining how

much of my limited understanding of Lacan is due to Wilden's work.

15. i.e. Laplancheand Leclaire: 1961: Derrida 1967/1972; Bar;197l; Deleuze

and Guettari: 1973.

 104

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