The unconscious possesses a double potentiality, as a virtual power likely to materialise, connoting the drive or force and directed, within a duration and sequence—in effect that of thought—by an intentionality that aims at the attainment of pleasure and the flight from pain. This potentiality is double: it is at one and the same time negative when it leads to an erasure or repression of desire and its signifying substrates which come to be replaced by nonsense; and positive because it retains a store and a range of sense2 that impels mental activity.
The discovery yielded by psychoanalysis—namely the unconscious—consists in the tension between these two potentialities in relation to sense. It must be observed that the dynamics of thought and intelligence are better understood since Freud in the light of their signifying organisation; this is embedded in the relations which make up the various types of communication. The articulations between the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious are those which preside over the relations between signifiers. They constitute authentic markers as well as elements that are vital to thought and speech. This view is predicated upon the distinctive development of a linguistics specific to psychoanalysis such as that which has emerged in France in the wake of Lacan, where one can distinguish digital linguistic signifiers alongside analogue, delimitative signifiers (Rosolato 1985). As for the facts investigated by psychoanalysis—the idiosyncracies of enunciation, personal idiolects, lapses of thought and their psychopathology—these greatly transcend the, by definition, normative rules of linguistics and semantics.
It must be stressed that any human action, spoken word, thought or communication only become endowed with sense through the articulation, even if virtual, of one signifier with another.
The unconscious manifests itself first and foremost as a lack. A typical example is the memory lapse (l'oubli)—the sense of disappointed expectation when a word fails to come to mind spontaneously. It can also go unnoticed: the original absence is revealed in retrospect by memories (even the oldest once they are retrieved) or by the failure to complete a project.
Another manifestation of the unconscious consists in the incomprehensible expression of nonsense: it generates the slip of the tongue or the parapraxis, the dream or the symptom, whether it may be mental or psychosomatic.
Another form of lack can retrospectively become apparent in verbal ‘usage’: it can appear through a process of fixation on a word, an automatic sequence, or an unalterable interpretation. The inability to associate freely is especially indicative of this kind of mental block: its manifest expression is repetition, the relapse into a fixed explanation that is systematically summoned either to present the same discomfort and neurotic suffering, reduced seemingly to a bodily, biological, or medical dysfunction, or to envisage only a single psychoanalytic interpretation, one which ensures that a less acceptable one remains repressed. What thus becomes clear is that one of the functions of the preconscious consists in admitting certain elements into consciousness. Thanks to this, the signifying chains and the connections which sustain and might be able to reveal them remain repressed.
The power of the negative that impels the unconscious in these three different manifestations pertains to distinct functions.
The most important function relates to the very exercise of memory. the links between memory and the unconscious can never be overemphasised. There is a process of ‘storing’: Freud claimed that memories were surprisingly longlasting. Our psychic activity can just as easily focus on a field of reflection and keep at a distance through precise discrimination the heterogeneous products of memory acquisition. The latter nonetheless remain at its disposal (in a latent preconscious state, specifically) through the same process drawing on this store in order to foster some creative attempts likely to yield discoveries. Conversely, censorship and express prohibitions can enhance this exclusion of memory which reinforces neurotic repression.
Another important function of thought, in the process of repression brought to the fore by Freud is the avoidance of unpleasure (Freud 1915d). Representations relating to a painful reality will be set aside (as soon as they are perceived as such—even at the very beginning of life). This is true of representations relating to trauma, as well as those indicating prohibitions voiced by parents, a major cause of libidinal and moral psychic conflict. Consequently, immediate pleasure is put without delay into contest against predictable unpleasure. The unconscious thus ensures the disappearance of (thing) presentations—or, better even, of the signifiers that compose them—of unpleasure, as well as of prohibited pleasure. And if one adds the reversal into the opposite (and upon oneself) as a mechanism preceding repression, what is obliterated has already undergone a substitution or displacement which keeps anticipated pleasure at bay.
Specifically unconscious, this work of the negative can be described in different mental mechanisms and it also underlies normal thought processes (Rosolato 1996); it allows the deferral of instant gratification in favour of the attainment of a superior form of pleasure resulting from the actual completion of a task, following the logic of sublimation.
But its neurotic clumsiness and excess bring about, through repression, a disappearance that is only signalled by nonsense—or negative hallucinations, in extreme cases. The substitutive derivatives denoted by symptoms usually retain in the midst of their nonsense a release of pleasure that is itself a substitute, along with the unpleasant weight of prohibition. Both are closely correlated in the case of hysterical conversion.
Affect joins in the process, as a result, let us not forget, of its specific nature: it faces, Januslike, in two directions, possibly operating as a signifier (analogue mode) and, consequently, taking part in the process of communication, or, conversely, it is just as liable to be located outside significance as excess, strictly somatic outbursts, or physiological reactions. The latter property manifests itself (particularly in the guise of anxiety) in line with the potentiality for negativity of the unconscious, whenever it introduces nonsense through the repression of certain signifiers.
In extreme cases, one might describe this as a form of masochistic destructiveness (which, for simplicity's sake, can be attributed to the
death drive); the task of the latter consists in erasing memories and their corresponding signifiers which set their sights at intentionality and desire, themselves a target for destruction. In neurosis, whether it be hysteria or obsessional neurosis, the outcome is an excess of nonsense bordering on the delusional and trapping the subject in unrelenting as well as extravagant forms of behaviour.
However, the above must be distinguished from foreclosure, a mechanism specific to psychosis. Foreclosure relates to the unconscious insofar as the original repression that inscribes the distinction between tolerated stimuli and discarded or overlooked ones makes up the matrix of differences where signifiers are structured (Freud 1925h). Foreclosure would be the lack of this negative, where the failure in formation of a number of signifiers (the foreclosed ones, specifically) creates a vacuum filled by the delusional metaphor.
Yet a particular characteristic of the negative potentiality borne by the unconscious should be acknowledged, because it is inherent to this flight from sense. The aim of repression is the removal not only of unwanted representations, but also of the very process involved. Consequently, for those prompted by their unconscious, as well as observers and theoreticians, the success of the negative effect results in its own disappearance. From ‘la belle indifférence’ to fixed and banal explanations (whether a case of a simplistic medical reference or reduction to an action understood in economic terms that defy accurate calculation and are always dependent on subjective assessment, or whether one invokes the drive separated from all representations—and signifiers—and turned into an abstraction that denotes physiological depths), the specific result is the disappearance of the sense of an intentionality in relation to desire. The latter remains solely accessible via the path of signifiers.
What arises here is an unknown, which acquires an obstructive function insofar as it brings the process of disappearance to a conclusion, and unbeknownst to the subject, becomes an immutable explanation, if not a prejudice, which avoids any form of questioning, and thus plays into the hands of neurosis.
Psychoanalysis has shown that this unknown (whether completely misconstrued, veiled by a restricted or fallacious meaning [sens], appearing as a symptom or, still, admitted [to consciousness] in order to serve
as a decree of inhibition3) was able thanks to free association to emerge as a question which introduces a new meaning (sens). It may convey a secret to a special ear, that of the psychoanalyst.
It can thus be said that the negative potentiality of the unconscious sustains a loss, where thought and sense are engulfed. This does not occur without ‘hallucinatory satisfaction of desire’ insofar as its true version remains, in fact, suspended; nor does it rely on the signifying pathway that confers a grip on reality. The maintenance of the secret guarantees the dispersal of unpleasure and pain as well as the ensuing reversal of satisfying oneself through an abolition, which comes from a sinking into the heart of an absolute negative (attributed to the death drive). The appeal of negation and of destruction—as outspoken omnipotence, which is the origin of masochism—maintains this negative potentiality as close as possible to a state of perpetual dereliction in a jouissance that remains imaginary.
If one empties the unconscious of a ‘content,’ of a specific dynamic, (which psychoanalysis duly describes as primary, in comparison with secondary process); if one merely observes that any attempt to grasp the unconscious erases it (since it can only be grasped consciously), and if one rejects the positive potentiality which is a call for sense on the basis of a postulated origin (primal repression, unconscious fantasies), as well as of implications imposed by speech—all that is left of the unconscious is an apophatic reference that can rightly be criticised as a form of mysticism.
Surely the analytic relation is one of speech and sense that is inseparable from the unconscious and embedded in the act of communication, through free association (Laplanche 1981: 128). The importance of language for defining the unconscious is encapsulated by Lacan's phrase: ‘The unconscious is structured like a language,’ as relevant elements organise both (Nassif 1977). For further details, I refer the reader to my book Eléments de l'interprétation (Rosolato 1985).
1. The elements in question are the signifiers. There are two types. Linguistic, digital signifiers, restricted and limited in number, are articulated together to generate verbal sense. Language comprises a specific double
articulation: phonemes form words (second articulation), which are themselves organised into sentences (first articulation). Sense, the signified, is created by the relation between at least two signifiers. The analogue signifiers of ‘demanation’ are the elements that make up representations, in order to form mental images and their objective presentations: they are unlimited in number (as opposed to language conventions) and depend on sensory, visual, auditory, tactile, but also interoceptive stimuli. All forms of communication take place through the mediation of these two types of signifier. Any expression or object inscribed in a project or intention to communicate, even if unconscious, and thus equally any affect (which possesses a double polarity), action, or reflex can function as a signifier. It is, therefore, the relation with another signifier, which is missing but may be inferred and uncovered, that will yield an impression of sense, of the signified, in order to constitute a sign with the given signifier, even in a univocal and stable relation.
It becomes clear that the unconscious consists in a positive potential of signifiers—what is commonly referred to as ‘contents’. In this sense, primal repression must be viewed as a first point of access to the pairs of opposites which determine signifiers—namely here, acceptance versus rejection initially, later entailing the good and the bad, the inside and the outside, etc., established by signifiers.
Freud clearly refers to thing-presentations as contents of the unconscious (Freud 1925h) and their ‘ideational representative’ represents the delimitative signifier.4
The transition between the unconscious and the conscious which according to Freud takes place through the ‘translation’ (Freud 1915e) of thing-presentations into word-presentations, essentially consists in the connection between delimitative signifiers and linguistic signifiers.
Consequently, there is an unconscious initial potential composed of repressed analogue signifiers and unconscious primal fantasies. The fantasies can be posited because they are consistent with universal constants (primal scene, castration, seduction) which structure desires and prohibitions; they are the unconscious mise en scène of these signifiers.
The preconscious is connected to this initial potential operating through thought and speech and serving in the course of free association and speech addressed to the analyst, as an elaboration of a new
sense predicated on the subject's unique history and specific recovered lived experience.
2. However, such development depends on a dynamics of meaning (sens) through which signifiers become connected: this dynamic potential is consistent with desire itself—the desire to think, seek, know, act, and live.
Two forms of organisation establish the connections between signifiers, between their two categories, in primary process as much as in secondary process, that is to say and I emphasize it, in any thought, language or form of communication.
Metonymy constitutes not only the linear chain of linguistic signifiers, but also the composition of representations via delimitative signifiers. It is essentially the development of a logical coherence (by implication and through temporal diachronic causality); such coherence may be syntactic, spatial, of contiguity, representative or referential. The relation between signifier and signified—which constitutes the sign—is, in this case, narrow, sometimes even univocal, with a dictionary precision. Ellipsis pertains to metonymy in its own right: lack (Lacan's manque à être), in its dialogue with the signifying chain that doubles desire, reveals this ellipsis in the unknown that lies on the horizon of narrative and account, of coherent speech. A concentration of sense (sens) accompanies the rigour of congruence. This rational requirement is clearly prominent in the exchanges between interlocutors, on the basis of a context of identifiable memories and knowledge, and it also founds the commonality of a shared cognitive world.
Through displacement and the increased effacing of signifiers, the neurotic alteration of metonymy creates an enhanced metonymic ellipsis; this renders unconscious desire unrecognisable, especially in the case of the obsessional symptom.
Metaphor relies on a rupture in meaning (sens), produced by a substitution of signifiers which brings into play a polysemy; the latter harbours the unknown in its midst but overrules it, thanks to the multiple signifying chains evoked in signifying networks.
The symbolic is linked to the operation of metaphor as the power to disengage from needs, objects, and signs (as opposed to animals where they remain closely united by signals). It opens up the prospect of the potential of signifiers. The symbol must also be understood as a
metaphor designated by its shared resonances. Metaphor generates a condensation of meaning whose neurotic counterpart can be found in the hysterical symptom.
Furthermore, metonymy and metaphor are the dynamic mechanisms which allow the intra- and extra-systemic connections between signifiers. This is important; thanks to their mediation, the exchanges between the unconscious (delimitative signifiers, thing-presentations) and the (preconscious)-conscious (digital signifiers, word-presentations) can take place. Let us posit a quadrilateral representing the six relations that elicit these exchanges and whose poles they consist in: digital metonymy (Dm), digital metaphor (DM), and their two analogue counterparts (Am) and (AM). Thus, the signifying elements and the metaphoric-metonymic mechanisms structure the unconscious like a language.
3. Finally, the construction of meaning (sens) always necessitates a triple relation which is put to the test between language (digital signifiers), representations (analogue signifiers), and the referent. The latter cannot and must not be evaded. Words and representations (as well as fantasies) are not things. Freud used to insist on ‘reality-testing’: through their elaboration, words and representations are effectively the leaders in spotting the permanence of the object, its reality, but also its transformations. Additionally they support the bringing to light of aspirations, of projects relating to what does not yet exist and in relation to desires. This triple relation leads to the obstruction of the real ultimately remaining inaccessible to our thought as an unknowable unknown. Psychoanalysis works toward the discovery of the unconscious content of the relation to the referent, including the repressed internal reality of conflicts and fantasies with their respective defence mechanisms. The referent is a set of markers comprising known events, actions, the spoken word and received words, identifications and the footholds of transference and counter-transference, following which truth, still however subject to further transformation, can be distinguished from errors, illusions, and lies.
Working through is the pathway to this unveiling of implicit and unconscious meaning (sens), a pathway for assembling the signifying material in its previously indicated dynamic, in view of which interpretation cannot be reduced to ‘wild’ exploitation.
Positive potentiality thus opens up the prospect of sense. It reverses the virtual jouissance included in the unconscious fantasy restricted to negative potentiality, freeing up the pleasure of thinking without excluding reality, up to its very borders.
Yet the application of meaning in its positive direction could not be theorised without an experience of its limitation. Except in the case of an effective paranoid demand, this elaboration cannot take place without remainders. Beyond the knowable unknown an unknowable unknown perforce emerges, provided it is first identified and on condition too that its exploration should be located in a polar relation to the unknown, predicated on a different kind of knowledge. One cannot exhaust the unconscious or the negative underbelly of the reserves of memory; and defence mechanisms remain highly useful for confronting the difficulty and suffering of existence.
Thus the tension of the potentialities of the unconscious is balanced between two forms of excess: a meaning that is overly certain, impervious to questions, obstructing the unknown even though the latter is part of all mental activity, or conversely, a permanent doubt that puts forward the unknown as yet another kind of impediment.
It is, then, a dialectical movement with regard to the experience of knowledge pertaining to internal reality that grants access to the transition from the unconscious to the conscious. The development of castration is unavoidable here, provided one foregrounds the fact that it fundamentally consists in fantasy; that is to say a threat of anatomical castration imputed to an authority of paternal origin which provokes responses and mental attitudes of obvious inhibition and, conversely, their compensations. The apprehension of finitude that results can only take place in relation to death. The progress of an analysis—which of necessity encounters sexuality and aggression—is bound to confront their evolution with castration, death and finitude, in relation to the unknown. It then becomes possible to free the ego ideals from the restraint of the negative potentiality of the unconscious, and to find a use for its positive potentiality via a perspectival object that may harbour the unknown of desire, towards effective realisation.
Translated from the French by Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz.
Translator's note: I have chosen, initially, to use the term ‘sense’ in English instead of ‘meaning’ to translate the French word ‘sens,’ in an attempt to locate Rosolato's opposition between ‘non-sens’ (nonsense [negative potentiality]) and ‘sens’ (sense [positive potentiality]) in the context of the Freudian terminology (see, especially, Freud's discussion of sense and nonsense in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), S. E. VIII). Sense furthermore retains the polysemic quality of the French word ‘sens’ which, besides sensory faculties and meaning, also means direction or way, and, most importantly, connotes polarity. However, for the sake of clarity, I have often had to resort to the term ‘meaning,’ reminding the reader that ‘sens’ is used in the original (as indicated between brackets). Rosolato is most certainly aware of Lacan's distinction between ‘sens’ (sense or meaning) and ‘signification’ (signification), which is why I have avoided the term ‘signification’
Translator's note: ‘pour servir d'arrêt’ in the French text. The word ‘arrêt’ can refer to an official decree or ruling as well as to a stop, break, or halt, connoting at once a prohibition and an inhibition.
Translator's note: Vorstellungsrepräsentanz translated as ‘représentance de la représentation’ in Rosolato's essay, also translated into French as ‘représentant-représentation’ (see Laplanche & Pontalis, Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse, Paris: PUF).