The Lacanian Unconscious (3 of 4): “Language speaks through us“

Two of Lacan’s proclamations about the unconscious locate us in this talk, which serves to further explore the unconscious. The first of these concerns the idea that what is most scandalous about the unconscious is not that it exists or that it might be subversive. What is most scandalous is that the unconscious utilizes rational symbolic operations (is “structured like a language“). The second is the assertion that “the status of the unconscious is not ontological but ethical“, an idea which suggests that we engage the unconscious as a vehicle of cure or subjective transformation, rather than as a positive feature or object to be studied. Link to board: