Departing from A. Rifflet-Lemaire's 1970 presentation of Lacan's theory, Moersch gives special attention to an outline of Lacan's interpretation of the unconscious. For Lacan, the unconscious is not a prelinguistic, archaic dimension of the psyche nor a phylogenetic inheritance whose formations have a regressive character. Rather, it is conditioned by language; it is itself structured like a language.