The Linguistic Unconscious of Jacques Lacan

If psychoanalysis is to be constituted as the science of the unconscious, one must set out from the notion that the unconscious is structured like a language.

In a style notorious for its hermetic obscurity, Jacques Lacan has articulated a radical discourse based upon his reading of the primary Freudian texts. What appears more radical than his own polemics is Lacan's observation that what was most original and most important in Freud has remained ignored and denied ever since its discovery. Lacan's appeal to psychoanalysts is to return to Freud, reread his works, and rediscover what has been left out in current interpretations of psychoanalytic theory. In so doing, Lacan tenders, one cannot help but be struck with the singular importance and significance that Freud accorded his discovery of the unconscious.

Given the current climate of psychoanalytic theorizing characterized by discussions of pre-Oedipal object relations and self-object transferences, Lacan's return to the unconscious may seem to be a step backward. After all, Freud himself supplanted the topographical theory with the structural theory, relegating the unconscious to a secondary characteristic of id-ego-superego functioning. Yet, it is known that even at the end of his life, Freud regarded the unconscious as his most important discovery, one that is critical to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Lacan contends that the significance of this discovery has become denatured and disavowed because of the distressing implications inherent in a full acceptance of its truth. Instead, analysts have focused on the ego as an agent of mastery and have emphasized adaptation as its goal. Such a conception of the ego is imaginary, according to Lacan, and serves only to foster the illusion of individual autonomy (2).

Lacan's approach to the Freudian unconscious emphasizes its linguistic dimensions. Although Freud never explicitly described the unconscious as