{"agent_id":"lacan","agent_name":"Jacques Lacan","slug":"the-unconscious-is-structured-like-a-language","label":"The unconscious is structured like a language: is this linguistics, or a metaphor borrowed from it?","topic":"The unconscious is structured like a language","question":"Is this linguistics, or a metaphor borrowed from it?","position":"Like a language, not a language. The unconscious is not a store of instincts to be translated; it is an order of signifiers with its own laws, and Freud's dream-work had already described them without the terms.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Like a language, not a language.","n":[]},{"t":"The unconscious is not a store of instincts to be translated; it is an order of signifiers with its own laws, and Freud's dream-work had already described them without the terms.","n":[1,2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious* (1957); *The Agency of the Letter*; Seminars III and V; *Radiophonie*. Reception: the objection that S/s is not Saussure's sign and inverts his own diagram; that Jakobson's metaphor and metonymy do not map onto condensation and displacement as claimed; Derrida's *Le facteur de la vérité* on the Poe seminar; the general charge that \"like a language\" does the work of an argument.","works":["*The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious* (1957)","*The Agency of the Letter*","Seminars III and V","*Radiophonie*"],"reception":"the objection that S/s is not Saussure's sign and inverts his own diagram; that Jakobson's metaphor and metonymy do not map onto condensation and displacement as claimed; Derrida's *Le facteur de la vérité* on the Poe seminar; the general charge that \"like a language\" does the work of an argument.","status":"Widely adopted as a slogan, contested as linguistics, and defended by his readers as a structural claim rather than an empirical one about grammar.","era":"1901-1981","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Seminar XIV, The logic of phantasy","page":"p. 86","canonical":"","quote":"This is why the place of all the dream-thoughts is marked here, on the right-hand side by this blank area where it is designated that the *Ich,* as such, is certainly indicated in VIII 86 each one of these dream-thoughts by finding it, by what is going to constitute what Freud calls *Trauminhalt*, namely, very precisely, this set of signifiers of which a dream is constituted by the different mechanisms of the…","label":"Seminar XIV, The logic of phantasy, p. 86"},{"n":2,"work":"My Teaching","page":"pp. 38–39","canonical":"","quote":"Iallow myself this prosopopoeia simply to make what I am saying comprehensible to those of you who have not heard it before. When I express myself by saying that the unconscious is structured like a language, I am trying to restore the true function of everything that structures under the aegis of Freud, and that in itself allows us to see our first step.","label":"My Teaching, pp. 38–39"},{"n":3,"work":"The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious","page":"pp. 17–18","canonical":"","quote":"For it is with this work that the work of Freud begins to open the royal road to the unconscious. And Freud gave us notice of this; his confidence at the time of launching this book in the early days of this century only confirms what he continued to proclaim to the end: that his whole message was at stake in this, the whole of his discovery.","label":"The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious, pp. 17–18"},{"n":4,"work":"The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud","page":"pp. 441–442","canonical":"","quote":"For this book inaugurates both Freud's work and his royal road to the unconscious. And we are informed of this by Freud, whose confession in letters to Fliess that have since been made public, when he launches this book toward us in the early days of this century,'¢ merely confirms what he continued to proclaim to the end: that the whole of his discovery lies in this no-holds-barred expression of his message.","label":"The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud, pp. 441–442"},{"n":5,"work":"Écrits, A Selection, Fink Translation","page":"pp. 160–161","canonical":"","quote":"I don't disagree, having had to pay homage somewhere here to a noble victim of the error of seeking in the letter, but I also ask how the spirit could live without the letter. The spirit's pretensions would nevertheless remain indisputable if the letter hadn't proven that it produces all its truth effects in man without the spirit having to intervene at all.","label":"Écrits, A Selection, Fink Translation, pp. 160–161"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-return-to-freud","label":"The return to Freud: is ego psychology a development of analysis or a betrayal of it?"},{"slug":"the-phallus-and-sexual-difference","label":"The phallus and sexual difference: does 'The woman does not exist' say anything about women?"},{"slug":"the-variable-length-session","label":"The variable-length session: a technical consequence of the theory, or an abuse the profession was right to stop?"},{"slug":"the-style-the-mathemes-and-the-topology","label":"The style, the mathemes and the topology: necessary to the subject matter, or obscurity mistaken for depth?"}]}