I was told that this piece was written as a book chapter but I find myself asking what reader does he imagine? The writing style resembles a list or notes for a lengthy talk, or an article for an encyclopedia with too few pages. The article is too dense for most readers of psychoanalytic texts. Too much conceptual ground is covered far too fast. In the first seven lines we find the reference to Freud's Pleasure Principle, to his theory of the ‘drive’ with reference to time, to ‘intentionality’, ‘repression’, ‘desire’, ‘sense’, ‘non-sense’ and ‘signifying substrates’. This high level of condensation is an obstacle to engaging with the ideas. To a small degree some of these terms are explained in the article. A high level of knowledge of Freud's metapsychological works, especially ‘The Project’, and ‘The Ego and the Id’ is assumed. If the reader is not familiar with these works, and much of Lacan's work too then I suspect little or nothing will be gained.
On the other hand, some loyal Lacanians may find themselves in perfect agreement with Guy Rosolato's short article, but therefore with little gain. Freud communicated far more clearly and so did Lacan—even when he wrote for an Encyclopedia!
In his favour, the paper translated for Sitegeist is a chapter from Rosolato's book, Eléments de l'interprétation (Elements of Interpretation) where perhaps the condensation of The Double Potentiality of the Unconscious is expanded and explained so that it becomes clear and accessible to any serious reader. On the evidence before us, however, this seems somewhat unlikely.
Rosolato appears wholly uncritical of Lacanian ideas which he appears to approve of wholesale. For example he follows Lacan in claiming that there is a fundamental distinction between metaphor and metonymy. I do not share this belief simply because I am confident that there would be very little agreement between any two experts on whether any one case was either metaphor or metonymy. Thus I do not
believe that these rhetorical distinctions are operational, at least in the clinic. For this reason, I think it is fruitless to distinguish metaphor and metonomy in theory.