Critically Evaluate Lacan’s

Statement That the Unconscious

Is the Discourse of the Other.

Student: Alan Cummins

Student No: 1165236
Lecturer: Dr. Rik Loose
Course: PSH381- Language and Psychoanalysis
 This essay will seek to critically evaluate the statement that the unconscious is the

discourse of the Other. Lacan held the view that the unconscious is structured like a language

and by this structuring it differed from Freud’s concept of the unconscious as a place or system

of wordless drives or as-yet-un-worded thoughts or ideas. For Lacan, the unconscious is only

available through language, through the discourse of the Other and the unconscious itself is

structured like a language. In order to evaluate this statement the essay has been split into the

following:

• What is the Other Defined As?

• What is the Relationship of the Symbolic and the Subject?

• What Constitutes Language?

• What is the Definition of the Unconscious?

• What does the Discourse of the Other Mean for Lacan?

• Examples of Unconscious Structured Like a Language.

• Brief Relation of Concept of Unconscious as Language to Clinical Practise.

• Criticisms of Lacan’s Conception of the Unconscious.

These identified areas of discussion are inter-related but will be discussed in brief, separately to

give some guiding structure to the discussion.

In order to understand and evaluate the statement that the unconscious is the discourse of

the Other we must clarify what the Other is. The Other can be described as a combination of

language as a structure, a symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject,

be that legal, cultural or kin and as the Freudian unconscious. It is language and the law. It is

based in the Symbolic insofar as it is particularised for each subject. It transcends the Imaginary

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because it cannot be assimilated through identification. It can be seen as the locus in which is

constituted the I who speaks with him who hears, that which is said by the one being already the

reply and the other deciding to hear it whether the one has or has not spoken. In the first instance

it is the mother who first occupies the position of the Other for the child. She acts as the Other

and receives the cries of the child and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message. Via

the process of castration and the completion of the Oedipus Complex the child discovers that the

Other is not complete and that a lack exists. The Other places itself between the individual and

the objects of their desire. Via language the Other makes desire insatiable and unstable. The

Other takes language as its field of action, it regulates everything. The Other makes the subject

speak and when the subject speaks it is trying to speak to the Other, and when spoken something

of the Other is returned to the subject. The Other is the field of stories before, during and after

the subject. It is the words, images and desires with which the subject identifies. It is the system

of language with rules, laws and regulations that become part of our psyche. The Other should

not be confused with the little other. The little other is the reflection and projection of the ego. It

is the image of the reflection of one’s own body in the mirror or those which are seen as

counterparts. It is based in the imaginary order.

The symbolic is the networks, social, cultural and linguistic into which a child is born.

Lacan states that the Symbolic is a linguistic dimension. Language reaches farther to the

Imaginary and the Real but the Symbolic is linguistically based in the signifier that is objects,

words, based on differences. By working in the symbolic the analyst can produce changes in the

subjective position of the analysand, the effect of which is seen in the images and appearances in

the Imaginary. For Lacan the Symbolic is a signifying process in which subjectivity is to be

found.

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 The subject is not a substance endowed with qualities or a container awaiting multiple

experiences but rather a series of events within language, as proposed by Lacan. Being a person

with a personality comes from the signifying chain of language. Language makes and splits the

subject at once. The speech which takes place between individuals encompasses their social

order. The subject is born into language and language has always been there from the beginning

of the individual’s subject hood. This pre-existing language defines them but does not give the

details of ordinary life.

The Other and the Subject come into being together under speech. There is no meaning

outside of words. Language is reality and everything pertaining to experience is language. Truth

and fact do not exist but in temporary form as language is based on a shifting ground between

words and meanings. We as subjects engage in anti-speech, saying things that have no

relationship to the truth, both consciously and unconsciously. Language provides a protection

against the Real. Language cannot bring totality or bring a final answer, we must reconcile with

this. Language exists before, during and after us, we have no option but to enter into language. If

we do not enter into language we depend on the imaginary which takes the form of delusional

thinking and hallucination with no means of negotiation. Language can be seen as a voluntary

produced set of arbitrary symbols, although we are captured by language born into a pre-existing

set. Language allows us to communicate but defines us as human. It is a set of infinite symbols

arranged in infinite sentences but with a grammar and structure applied. Without structure chaos

would ensue although the ability to generate an infinite number of sentences traps us / releases us

into a place where there is always more to be said. Language can be seen to constrain us and

incorporate us into the Symbolic. Language is a historical sense makes use of a diachronic

structure where one element follows another, where one symbol caused another. Language is

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also synchronic with all elements in a synchronous structure. In speaking we form a split

between the subject who enunciates and the subject as the object of the statement. Every speech

act implies an answer but also a frustration as we cannot say everything and are constrained by

the language in which we are borne. In speaking we alienate ourselves by identifying with

another. Language refers to a beyond the pleasure principle, to a lack, a stepping into the

symbolic order and a distancing from the immediate experienced reality. Language is not

equivalent to the Symbolic order. The symbolic dimension of language is the signifier and true

speech while the imaginary dimension is that of the signified, signification and empty speech.

Language is built as a chain of signs. A sign is as follows:

Accoustic
Signifier Words
image

= = SIGN

Signified concept Meanings

The values of signifiers and signifieds are based on the difference from within the system. The

constitutive element of language is the Signifier. The signifier is primary as without it signifieds

make no sense. The synchronic and chronological aspect of language creates a shifting, sliding

temporary meaning effect. At the punctuation or halt of a sentence a temporary quilting point is

made which allows meaning to be made. This rhythm and unfolding brings meaning. The chain

of signifiers limits the speaker’s freedom, meaning is always determined by context but equally

the chain of signifiers is not fixed in a one-to-one correspondence with the signified. This allows

for an endless chain of sliding or floating signifiers with no absolute truth. Metaphor and

metonymy are the fundamental basis of language and by association the unconscious. Metaphor

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replaces one word for another while metonymy connects individual words to one another to

make a signifying chain.

Lacan emphasises the concepts of condensation or metaphor and displacement or

metonymy as the means by which the unconscious expresses its symptoms and desires. He ties

this heavily to the Freud’s Dream-work represses the latent content as seen as the unconscious

into the manifest or conscious content. Condensation is seen as metaphor with a signifying

substitution because it involves the substitution of one signifier for another. In language this

substitution takes place mostly due to a semantic or homophonic similarity. This similarity is not

always immediately identifiable when it occurs on an unconscious level. Only associative chains

can reveal it. Displacement is seen via metonymic progression with the analysis of a dream as a

dismantling of the dream-work through the traversing of the chain of contiguous elements.

For Lacan the unconscious is constituted by series of chains of signifying elements. The

gaps in the series of signifiers are where we find the unconscious. The unconscious comes back

via mistakes, slips of tongue, dreams, and jokes. Unconsciousness is not seen as a bio-energetic

power-house behind or beneath human speech. Lacan sees the unconscious as structured like a

language and that there is no veiled signified-in-waiting that will eventually call the crazy

procession of signifiers to order. Freud designates the unconscious as the collection of all one’s

unsatisfied desires whereas Lacan argues that the important thing is not what the disguised desire

is, but how it chooses to disguise itself. In other words, it is the cloaking mechanism that a given

desire uses to slip past one’s moral filters that reveals the nature of the unconscious. Therefore,

the language the unconscious uses to dissemble is every bit as important as the illicit desires that

it tries to cover up. The unconscious is not without logic or its own reason, it requires linguistic

structures to operate, and it requires language to be articulated. The unconscious reveals more in
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what is implied and not actually said rather than what is explicitly said. It reveals itself not in

speech but in slips of tongue, forgetfulness and silence because it is the censored part of

language. The unconscious is beyond conscious control. It is the discourse of the Other.

Unconsciousness as based in language, speech, discourse and signifiers is located in the order of

the symbolic. It exists as a trans-individual nature, it is exterior and intersubjective. It is the

attempted discourse between the subject and the Other. The unconscious is seen as a kind of

memory, in the sense of a symbolic history of the signifiers that have determined the subject in

the course of his life. In this sense, since it is an articulation of signifiers in a signifying chain,

the unconscious is a kind of unknown symbolic knowledge.

The discourse of the Other is the existence of combination and selection, metaphor and

metonymy, condensation and displacement in the unconscious. These processes involve an

interaction. There is a divided subject with consciousness and unconsciousness, a speaking

subject and a desiring subject. Lacan’s statement that the unconscious is the discourse of the

Other means: the human subject is divided; the unconscious has a linguistic structure and the

subject is inhabited by the Other. When we speak, we don’t directly speak our minds: we funnel

our thoughts through the framework of a specific language, when we dream we use sanitized

symbols to slip our desires past our own internal filters. Those symbols lend an illusory and

respectable distance to topics we try to study and pretend to control, in part because they don’t

entirely capture the uniqueness and urgency of our individual desires. In this way, dream

symbols clearly constitute a language imposed on us by others. The unconscious is the effects of

the signifier on the subject, in that the signifier is what is repressed and what returns is in the

formations of the unconscious as symptoms, jokes, Para praxes, and dreams. His statement

means that the origin of the unconscious lies in our recognition of the Other and that the

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unconscious comes from the language of the Other. According to Lacan, the human subject is

always split between a conscious side, and an unconscious side. The cost of human “knowledge”

is that these drives must remain unknown. We are, as a split subject, what we are on the basis of

something that we experience to be missing from us—our understanding of the other—that is the

other side of the split out of which our unconscious must emerge. Because we experience this

“something missing” as a lack we desire to satiate this lack. But because desire is bound by

language and metonymic and metaphoric processes it cannot be satisfied. Desire is left always

unsatisfied and is either displaced from signifier to signifier or it is substituted for—one signifier

for another—and the whole process makes up a “chain of signifiers,” which remains

unconscious. Psychoanalysis aims to lead the analysand to uncover the truth of their desire if it is

possible to be articulated. The whole truth, as previously discussed cannot be spoken or brought

forth in the discourse with the Other. The unconscious is formed via the mirror stage. The Other

comes into being by the child acquiring language and realising he is not part of his mother but

separate. In recognising oneself as a separate entity coherence is provided but also alienation.

This realization leads to a fragmentation of the ego as it both symbolizes the mental permanence

of the I, and at the same time as it prefigures its alienating destination. The reflection in the

mirror provides proof of the child’s existence, but only at the cost of splitting him into two parts:

the visible reflection and the “real” person, complete with all its internal thoughts and sensations.

A person can only begin to desire when he realizes he is lacking and that realization only comes

about as a result of being able to identify with others, which is in turn dependent on being able to

disassociate from one’s self. This brings the child into language and brings about the symbolic

castration of the child from the mother via the Name of the Father. Desire to regain this

fundamental lack is metonymic in nature, the desire can never be regained but only momentarily

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satisfied. Desire comes as a result of the subject in the chain of signifiers and demands the

presence of the Other. This is part of the discourse of the Other, the subject has to ask for

something, to demand something. Once language via the mirror stage comes into being the

subject is in a constant rotation of demand circling around desire via signification without full

satisfaction.

Demand

Desire

In identifying ourselves in the mirror phase we need to de-identify ourselves from roles we place

ourselves in and step away from imaginary identification to symbolic identification. The only

access to we have to our self is via something that is outside of ourselves. We gain independence

and step into language with a system of discourse between the subject as desiring and the Other

as mediating that desire. In entering the symbolic we become split into grammatical subject and a

subject of the unconscious. There is a doubling of the subject that of what is said and unsaid. The

analyst tries to bring forth the discourse of the Other, expressed via slips of tongue, hesitation

and punctuation and so on.

As discussed during the mirror phase the child has taken an imagined double of himself.

This identification of the child with an imaginary unified ego gives rise to narcissim,

psychoanalysis aims at getting rid of this false sense of a unified ego and to free the subject from

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the obsession with its ego so that he may be able to appreciate his relation with the other. The

relationship with the other is via language. The ego belongs to imaginary world, language

belongs to symbolic realm. The analyst tries to help to move the subject from the imaginary

world of self to the symbolic world of language in which the subject can interact with the Other.

The division of self or the split I helps the subject to gain an insight into the hidden language of

the unconscious and to understand the lack in the self which is the desire of the Other. This

discourse helps to get rid of the illusion of self-completeness and an integrated ego. As the

Schema-L indicates the subject tries to speak to Other but cannot. It is ego that speaks to Other.

(subject) S o’ (other)
is
ax
y

un
ar

co
in
ag

ns
Im

ci
ou
s

(ego) o O (Other)

The Subject’s utterances about himself perpetuate a hoax in which he is completely alienated

within the imaginary register. The ego is the subject’s imaginary identification of himself. The

ego can attain the status of imaginary representation only through the other and in relation to the

other. The Subject is in position S but sees himself in position o. That is in his ego. The mirror

stage has made achievement of an identity through an image. o’ is the other, that is his fellow

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being. The subject’s relation with himself is always mediated by axis oo’. The relation of S to o

is thus dependent on o’ and inversely, the subject’s relation to the o’ is dependent on o. This

indicates a dialectic of identification of oneself with the other and of the other with oneself.

When a subject communicates with another subject, communication is always mediated by the

imaginary axis oo’. This is alienation as S in attempting to communicate with O always misses

its target. The discourse of the Other is brought about when S addresses O something of this

Other comes to him from the mere fact that he is addressing him. A subject speaking to another

always addresses a message to this other whom he necessarily takes to be an Other; this other

whom he is speaking is recognised as an absolute Other, a genuine subject. But even if the

subject recognises him as Other, Lacan adds, he does not know him as such, because it’s

essentially this unknown in the otherness of the Other that characterises the speech relation at the

level at which speech is spoken to the other. The beyond of speech where implicit inverted

message comes from is thus the Other and this is why human language depends on a form of

communication in which our message comes to us from the Other in an inverted form. Speech

always subjectively includes its own reply. The message from O to S is implicit and therefore

unconscious. At the locus of the ego o, the articulation of the message is totally over-determined

by the message coming from O. The wall of language is the obstruction that hinders direct

communication between subjects. The unconscious is this discourse of the Other where the

subject receives in an inverted form suited to the promise, his own forgotten message.

As a divided subject we try to start a certain way in conscious speech but then we restart

or anticipate what we say.

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 retroaction

S anticipate O

The discourse of the Other in an unconscious intentionality comes into play. The Other reactions

and the analyst must be vigilante of avoidance, ellipsis, circumlocution, mixed metaphors,

disclaimers, downplaying, offhand comments, distraction, and unprovoked denials when dealing

with an analysand. Repression in a conscious or unconscious intentionality must be avoided.

Examples of the unconscious as the discourse of the Other can be seen in a child’s

alternating exclamations fort and da, as reported by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The

paternal metaphor is mediated by language. The Name of the Father is taken as signification as

the desire for the mother and the phallus is lost. Dreams such as Irma’s Injection and those in the

Ratman case show the unconscious as the discourse of the Other. Distortion, symbolisation,

representation, secondary revision, condensation, and displacement show the processes of

metaphor and metonymy and how the unconscious is structured like a language.

Jokes contain both metaphor and metonymy. Jokes can work through signifying

substitution. This is metaphoric condensation. An elaboration of a joke may also be based on the

unconscious register of displacement. This consists of the diversion of the train of thought, the

displacement of the psychical emphasis on to a topic other than the opening one. This uses

metonymy. Jokes are a good means of expressing hidden desires of the unconscious. Thus

Lacan, 1977.

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“challenge of nonsense where humour, in the malicious grace of the mind free from the care

symbolises a truth that has not said its last word”

The symptom is a metaphoric and metonymic construction. In metaphor, a signifying

substitution of a new signifier for an old repressed one occurs. The new signifier, the symptom

maintains a bond of similarity to the repressed signifier it replaces. Metonymy is seen where a

reversal of values occurs, the affect is reversed via the movement of displacement. Unconscious

activity combines metaphor and metonymy as to make the expression of the repressed desire

unrecognisable. The symptom is seen as the return of the truth. It can be interpreted only in the

order of the signifier, which has meaning only in relation to other signifiers. This gives

justification to the thesis that the unconscious is structured like a language, Bowie, 1979.

“The psychical mechanism by which neurotic symptoms are produced involves the pairing of two

signifiers – unconscious sexual trauma and changes within, or actions by, the body – and

is thus metaphorical; whereas unconscious desire, indestructible and insatiable as it is,

involves a constant displacement of energy from object to object and is thus metonymic. An

arrest of the metonymic function produces not a symptom but a fetish.”

Several criticisms can be placed at Lacan’s feet with regard to his broad definitions of

language. Bowie, 1991, suggests that Lacan, in stating that the

“unconscious is structured like a language is …simply selling psychoanalysis short. Far from

being an inoffensive analogical aid to the perception and articulation of mental structure

his slogan and the project that it summarises give language a pre-eminent role. And where

Freud erected barriers against language inside his metal models, Lacan at first seems to

be allowing it to cross all thresholds and run amok.”

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Bowie is suggesting that Lacan did not take enough account of the many different aspects that

Freud tried to account for and brushed the unconscious under the structure of language.

“Freud found… other non-linguistic modelling devices also fascinated him and prevented him

from thinking of psychoanalysis as a speech-science pure and simple.”

Bowie notes that Lacan uses the concept of signified and signifier in a very broad sense.

“The problem with expressions like these is that they make a single feature of analytic

experience resemble very closely a variety of other features: the symptoms ‘structured like

a language’ sounds like the unconscious itself, and both sound like a supra-individual and

self-propelling process that may or may not have anything to do with the precise times and

places where human suffering occurs… the apparent technical precision into signifier and

signified still casts its net extremely wide. It catches the strictly verbal symptoms that are

to be observed in the individual patient’s speech, but also the behavioural and somatic

events that psychoanalysis is also obliged to confront.”

Bowie notes that Freud does speak of wordless drives and desires and latent dream thoughts but

Lacan dismisses this as:

“Lacan ...trust the structure of the dreams Freud discusses, rather than the pseudo-biology with

which he seeks to underwrite it ...the dream work follows the laws of the signifier and that

the signifier has a constitutive role in the unconscious realm to which dreams give access.”

Lacan’s jargon of signification, has as its most conspicuous advantage that of removing minds

and mental processes or apparatus from the scene and Bowie states that the signifier seems to be

a convenient catchphrase:

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“as a way of suggesting the existence, within the noise of human language, of a fundamental

level of structure, by recourse to which the manifold flowering of social and cultural forms

may be understood. The Symbolic is an equally convenient way of sketching the entire

range of those levels from lowest to highest and the common structural principles that

allow them to intercommunicate.”

In summation Lacan sees discourse as something we are borne into. Unconsciousness is

structured like a language and is ruled over by the primacy of the signifier. We cannot escape

language. In acquiring an identity we form a divided subject, one that speaks and one that is the

object of the statement. This split subject gives rise to a discourse of the Other which returns to

consciousness via dreams, slips of tongue, mistakes and jokes. Metaphor and metonymy are the

structure of language and we as human subjects cannot transcend the limits of language. Speech

of the Other returns in inverted form in unconscious truth, conscious and unconscious

intentionality.

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References

Bowie, M. (1979). Structuralism and Since.

Bowie, M. (1991). Lacan. Fontana Press.

Lacan, J. (1977). Function and Field of Speech and Language, Ecrites: A Selection, Tavistock

Publications Ltd, London, p30.

Bibliography

Chiesa, L. (2007). Subjectivity and Otherness. A Philosophical Reading of Lacan. MIT Press.

Dor, J. (1998). Introduction to the Reading of Lacan. Feher-Gurewich, J. (Ed), other Press, New

York.

Quinodoz, J. (2004). Reading Freud: Achronological Exploration of Freud’s Writings. Press

Universitaires de France.

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