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Unit 15: The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconcious—Jacques Lacan: Critical Appreciation

psychological point of view and re-defines the signifier-signified in the light of human psychology. Notes
In the discussed essay, Lacan emphasizes on the exposition of words or letters considering as the
realm of truth. Saussure has established the doctrine that language as structured system and it has
a one to one relation with human brain. To study the workings of brain we take the help of
language expressed through letters and words. By letter, Lacan designates that material support
which concrete speech borrows from language.
Lacan's entire study of unconscious is based on the verbal signs. His theory explores that verbal
signs are the valid methodology for investigating the unconscious state of mind. Verbal signs,
letters, or signifiers are revelation of human mind, both conscious and unconscious. Our utterances,
working in a metonymic process, give adequate representation of psychology, as letters are creation
of mind/brain. Lacan states in this context:
"…realm of truth is in fact the word, when his whole experience must find in the word alone its
instrument, its framework, its material, and even the static of its uncertainties."
In doing so, Lacan denies arbitrariness of sign, having a constant signified that is well celebrated
by Saussure. According to Lacan, there is no constant meaning of a sign, and one signifier leads to
another signifier. The very process of signification is operated with a mental process. In Lacanian
term, signifier has to answer for its existence in the name of any signification. Lacan insists that
mental condition gets illustration through words and phonemes that carry within it the signifying
chain. Through the utterances, we can familiar with the state of psychology and hence modern
psychologist after Freud insists on the letters, phonemes or signifiers as tools for analyzing
unconscious. Lacan, in his investigation, revises the Freudian concept of unconscious and Saussure's
theory of signifier and signified. Lacan seems to insist on the metonymic process in his projection
and exposition of unconscious. Lacan believes that unconscious is structured like language and
can be interpreted from semiotic viewpoint. He defines and interprets the relation between signifier
and signified in terms of human psychology. Lacan is of the view that the workings of unconscious
are expressed through the letters and the repetition of the letters.
In his essay "The Insistence of the letter in the Unconscious", Lacan exposes the key concept of
nature and culture in the formation of unconscious. Nature and Culture take crucial part in the
formation of human character as human beings are both natural and a cultural product. In Lacanian
psychoanalysis, psychosexual development and Oedipus complex is discussed in terms of pre-
linguistic stage of development that he calls the imaginary and the stage after acquisition of
language that he calls symbolic. Descartes speaks that there are some innate ideas, which we
inherit at the time of our birth that are considered as natural instincts to our character. The infant's
gradual discovery of his self and the competence of the distinction between 'self' and 'other' at the
'mirror stage' tries to know the 'other'. The infant gradually develops a longing to know the
opposite sex, and feels attractive and constructs the Oedipus complex. Attraction towards opposite
sex is very natural to everyone. But these natural instincts are suppressed and dominated by the
cultural forces and social taboos and one has to store these desires and feelings in the unconscious.
Suppression of natural instincts, desires and fantasies in the unconscious get outlet in the form of
hallucination, nightmare, hysteria, mental imbalance and neurotic disease. Moreover, the unfulfilled
desires and fantasies stored in unconscious effect the conscious mind too. In the mirror stage the
infant discriminates between 'I' and 'other', and become curious to know and see the body of
opposite sex in the heyday of life. But socio-cultural taboos and education become the restriction
to all these desires. In the later stage of life some fearful incidents or some happenings that lay
crucial impact in the development of psychology and create further troubles. Lacan speaks about
desire and its efficacy in the construction unconscious and dreams. While Freud says that distortion
is the general precondition of for the functioning of dreams, Lacan says that within this precondition
there is a sliding of signified under the signifier which is always active in speech and project the
unconscious stage of mind.
Lacan illustrates the working of unconscious in the conscious state of mind, which exposed in
terms of letters and utterances. To validate his point Lacan mentions one example of a couple of
siblings who were traveling by train, sitting face to face near the windows, and when the train had
stopped in one station they had seen two urinals, dividing one for gentleman and another for

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