Category: Lacan

What does not help to understand the text « L’instance de la lettre dans l’inconscient » by Jacques Lacan is that his examples or analogies rarely serve to simplify the text. That a boy and girl arrive by train in the HOMMES or DAMES city or that hot or cold air is blowing under some obscur concept do not help me to understand Lacan’s arguments or ideas. Therefore, I decided to listen to the professors and to limit myself to a 25-minute period of response. Let’s see if I can reach 400 words – are they relevant or not.

I like how Lacan uses Saussure’s terminology to discuss figures of speech such as metonymies and metaphors. Let’s analyse a common French metonymie : « Prendre un verre » (literaly « Take a glass »). In this figure of speech, the container represents its content. The meaning of the signifier has then shifted to represent something else. It reminded me of Barthe’s concept of Language level and Myth level in which the former is the first order and the latter is the second order. I shall borrow this terminoly in the rest of my comment.

What we can see here in figures of speech – and not fully developped by Lacan – is that the second-order signifier (that is, glass for beverage) is specific to a given language, just like the first-order one is (that is, the French verre is different in form than the English glass ; but they both are associated to the signified). Hence, just like in various languages first-order signifiers are different to represent a given signified, second-order signifiers are as well. By example, while « il pleut des cordes » en français (literaly, « it’s raining ropes »), for some English speakers « it’s raining cats and dogs » ! Such idioms were not invented at a given time by a single author, but have been developed over time in specific linguistic communities through explicit or implicit historical, social, cultural experiences. I shal call this the collective unconscious.

Such realities make the study of a language particularly interesting, but very difficult for second language learners : it is not enough to know the first-order signs, to master a language there are complexities and subtleties that belong at a higher order.

( 25 minutes – 384 words. I should always write under pressure…)

Understanding linguistics and psychoanalysis all in one text is not something that comes naturally to me, so I’m going to use this space to go ahead and try to make some sense of what I just read and, to the best of my ability, throw in a comment or two.

What I understand as the premise of Lacan’s text is that the unconscious is structured in the same way as language. However, according to Lacan, language does not work in the way good old Saussure made us believe. What we had learnt was that signifier and signified worked hand in hand, like two sides of one page in the creation of the sign but the signifier always above the signified: S/s.  Here, Lacan says “not really” signifier and signified actually work independently they are separated by a bar and the two sides of a page are more like to stages of a process in which the signifier relates to other signifiers in the system, in order to cross over the bar to reach the signified and create signification, a signification that can be “something quite otherthan what it says”. This notion emphasizes the importance of metaphor and metonymy because they work precisely by signifying something other than what they claim: part of a whole in the case of metonymy and substitution of two different things for metaphor.  Metaphor and metonymy are at the core of the structure of language and their functioning depends not on likeness but on difference and word-to-word relations.

Then Lacan says that that’s exactly how the unconscious works. He takes as basis Freud’s ideas that what the unconscious transmits through dreams is a coded meaning for something else and makes a parallelism between condensation and metaphor and displacement and metonymy.

This reminded me of last class’ discussion when the idea of “textualizing” (I hope it’s ok to invent words) the imagery of dreams came to the table but in this case dreams are already “textualized” in the sense that they’re structured just like our language so there’s actually no translation taking place but a transcription.

I can’t help but think that through this view people are to some extent slaves of language because it “writes” its letter on the unconscious and we have the need to decipher it for our conscious sake. Furthermore deciphering represents a very difficult task since the method of interpretation seems to lack rigorous accuracy. At least the unconscious is not anymore a place of no law, of the primitive, the instincts and the irrational but it is now subjected to the symbolic rulings of language. If only language weren’t an arbitrary mess…

To say that Lacan’s “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason, Since Freud” is somewhat of a difficult read would be a gross understatement.  Those not versed in the fundamentals of psychoanalysis or Freudian Psychology would most definitely have a hard time in attempting to understand the complexities of Lacan’s discourse.  My attempt to analyze Lacan’s work would do no justice as I find some of his concepts too abstract to grasp.  However, for the sake of some casual blogging, I will attempt to shed light on some of the aspects that I believe Lacan was attempting to convey.

In the most general of analyses, I do believe that what Lacan was generally trying to say was that language exists in our subconscious and that through speech we are able to reflect on the world in our own subjective manner.  He goes on to add that the development of speech is the beginning of the symbolic order of the universe.  Put more clearly, as we reach the age in which we are able to speak, the language present in our unconscious lends itself to speech, allowing us to subjectively see the world and make sense out of it.  I speculate that maybe this is why as human beings we are always striving to confirm the existence of an established order in the universe.  It can sometimes be quite difficult to accept the notions of randomness and obscurity when lending interpretation to the events of our lives; order gives birth to meaning and in doing so, affirms our place in the universe.  Lacan further emphasizes this point in his explanation of the signifier and the signified, in which he places primacy to the signifier.  I think what he is trying to say here is that by establishing the algorithm signifier/signified, the process of signification can take place.  That is, the world is composed of signs that have no inherent meaning attached to them.  Instead, they [signs] garner meaning through the difference between other signs, a process that is ascribed via language.  This is exactly how metaphor serves to invoke a greater meaning/lesson through seemingly unrelated language.  The process at work here is one of signification; one is able to draw a deeper meaning associated with language not intended to be literal.  Of course, at the heart of this is the notion of subjectivity and how as subjects we help to move along the process of signification.  Therefore, just as Freud had suggested that our dreams provide insight into our unconscious and our suppressed desires and true feelings, language may serve to express our notions of how we see the world and, more provocatively, harbor the inner yearnings of our unconscious.

Lacan followed Saussure’s structural linguistics and integrates Saussure’s theories in his own opinions. Lacan thought the unity with mother’s body is our primordial experience, all desire is determined by this original lost unity which is unattainable even though all desired objects are signifying it. Desired objects are just substitutes for the unattainable goal. Desire, stay in the conscious but influenced by unconscious, moves along the chain of desired objects, a chain of signifiers which circulates unceasingly without anchorage, in the chain of signifiers, one signifier can point to another signifier, but never the signified. Like the function of dictionary, one word can give you an explanation composed of other words, but never the object signified by the word. As to Lacan, this is unconscious. He compared a bar separating the signifier from the signified to the bar separating consciousness from the unconscious. Unconscious can be signified but never be inaccessible. Unconscious is neither primordial nor instinctual, it’s a group of elements of the signifier, a group of all the existence. Lacan used an example of two same doors with different signs to symbolize how signifier and signified reinforce each other’s function. Through the story of a little boy and a little girl who notice the signifiers signifying the opposite sex, I think Lacan believed every child develops their comprehension of the nomination of objects and the relation between the signifier and signified in the process of nomination.

As “the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud”, Lacan pointed out that Freud’s works indicate “connection” and “substitution” of signifier to explain unconscious. Lacan believed “significance of the dream” can be obtained by us because we take dream-images as signifiers, the linguistic structure is fundamental for the interpretation of dreams. This thought is based on the two principal mechanisms posed by Freud—condensation and displacement—which are naturally linguistic phenomena. The signification is condensed by metaphor or displaced by metonymy.

Lacan thought the order and methods of psychoanalytic mediation of Freud were no longer true. Freud believed “where the unconscious was, consciousness shall go”. Freud hoped to merge the unconscious into consciousness to dispel the depression and neurosis. Freud emphasized on the integration of “ego” and consciousness, which could become stronger than unconscious. But Lacan deemed “ego” could not replace or control unconscious, he thought “ego” was just an illusion, a product of unconscious itself. He elaborated in his essay on the mirror stage, a psychoanalytic theory which explains the process of an infant obtaining the illusion of the “ego” from the mirror and how he induces apperception of a whole integrity. Then we can know the human subjectivity is inherent. Although a child can get the conception of “ego”, he takes the image in the mirror as “himself”, but it’s not the reality, what shows in the mirror is only an image, an incorrect identification, this concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Lacan shows that the “ego” is the product of misunderstanding.