Metaphor

Metaphor (French: 'métaphore') in Lacanian psychoanalysis names a structural operation of the unconscious, not merely a rhetorical ornament. For Jacques Lacan, metaphor is one of the two principal mechanisms of the signifier—alongside metonymy—through which meaning (signification) is produced, desire is articulated, and symptoms take form within speech. Metaphor is defined by Lacan as a process of signifying substitution: one signifier replaces another within the signifying chain, and a new effect of meaning emerges from that substitution.

Lacan’s concept of metaphor is developed most systematically in his 1957 essay The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud, where he links metaphor to Freud’s dream-work and states the thesis that “the unconscious is structured like a language.” In that framework, metaphor becomes a privileged operator of repression and meaning-production: Lacan famously formulates that “the symptom is a metaphor,” and correlatively that “desire is a metonymy.”

Scope and basic definition

In classical rhetoric, metaphor is usually defined as a transfer of meaning based on resemblance. Lacan retains the term but relocates its function: metaphor is not primarily a matter of stylistic creativity but a formal mechanism internal to the unconscious as structured by the signifier. Metaphor is thus a model for:

• the production of meaning at points where the signifying chain is interrupted or “quilted” (quilting point);
• the logic of repression and the return of the repressed;
• the formation of symptoms as meaningful yet opaque signifying formations;
• the constitution of the subject as an effect of signifiers.

In this perspective, metaphor is inseparable from Lacan’s general thesis that the signifier does not “represent” a stable signified but produces signified effects through differential relations and substitutions within a chain.

Linguistic and theoretical background

Saussure and the primacy of the signifier

Lacan’s recasting of metaphor depends on his appropriation and transformation of Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics. Saussure defines the linguistic sign as a dyad of signifier (sound-image) and signified (concept), and insists that meaning is differential: signs signify by virtue of their differences within a system, not by reference to intrinsic properties.

Lacan radicalizes this framework in two key ways:

• He stresses the bar between signifier and signified (often written $S/s$) as a structural “resistance” to full meaning.
• He privileges the signifier as primary: the signified is treated as an effect produced by signifiers in relation, rather than a pre-given content that language merely “labels.”

Metaphor, within this modified Saussurean framework, is the operation by which the bar is (momentarily) crossed and a new signified effect is produced.

Jakobson: metaphor/metonymy as two axes of language

Lacan’s pairing of metaphor and metonymy is explicitly indebted to Roman Jakobson, who distinguishes two fundamental poles of language: selection/substitution (metaphoric pole) and combination/contiguity (metonymic pole), relating these poles to distinct aphasic disturbances.

Lacan adopts Jakobson’s structural distinction while redirecting it toward Freudian mechanisms: metaphor becomes the formal correlate of Freud’s condensation, while metonymy becomes the correlate of displacement (see below).

Freud reread: condensation and substitute formations

Condensation in dream-work

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud identifies condensation (Verdichtung) as a basic mechanism of dream-work: multiple latent thoughts are compressed into a single manifest element, so that a dream image is overdetermined and carries several lines of meaning at once.

Lacan interprets condensation linguistically: the “compression” of meanings is read as an effect of signifying substitution, where one signifier can stand in for multiple latent signifiers and thereby generate a surplus of signification.

Repression and substitution

Freud’s account of symptom formation emphasizes that repressed material returns in disguised forms (compromise formations, substitute formations). Lacan formalizes this logic by treating repression as an operation in the signifying chain: a signifier is elided (repressed), another takes its place, and meaning returns as a displaced and condensed effect—i.e., as a metaphorical product of substitution.

Lacan’s formal definition

Metaphor as signifier substitution

Lacan defines metaphor structurally as the substitution of one signifier for another within the signifying chain, such that meaning emerges at the site of the substitution.

A minimal schematic representation is often given as:

$\frac{S}{S^{\prime }}$

where $S^{\prime }$ is the signifier that is elided (replaced) and $S$ is the signifier that comes to occupy its place; the production of a new signified effect is what is at stake in the operation.

Metaphor and the “crossing of the bar”

In Lacan’s use of the Saussurean bar, the emergence of signification is not automatic but produced by an operation. In the metonymic chain, signification tends to slide; the bar remains as resistance. In metaphor, substitution makes possible a crossing that yields an effect of meaning (effet de signification).

Accordingly, Lacan treats metaphor as the privileged operation of signification—a momentary “knotting” or “stop” that produces meaning as an effect, rather than revealing meaning as a hidden content.

Metaphor, metonymy, and the formations of the unconscious

Complementary operations

Lacan’s metaphor is inseparable from metonymy:

• Metonymy: the signifying chain proceeds by contiguity; meaning slides, is deferred, and remains resisted by the bar.
• Metaphor: a substitution occurs at a point in that chain; meaning emerges as a product of the substitution.

This structural coupling allows Lacan to propose a general mapping:

• condensation ↔ metaphor
• displacement ↔ metonymy

It also grounds Lacan’s aphoristic correlation: “desire is a metonymy” and “the symptom is a metaphor.”

The symptom as metaphor

To call the symptom a metaphor is to say: the symptom is a signifying formation in which a repressed signifier returns through substitution, producing a condensed and enigmatic meaning-effect that is not reducible to conscious intention. In this sense, the symptom is not merely a behavioral abnormality but a structured signifying product—something that “means” without the subject knowing what it means.

This thesis is explicitly attributed to Lacan in standard Lacanian reference works and tied to The Agency of the Letter as the locus classicus.

The paternal metaphor

The exemplary metaphor: Name-of-the-Father

The central clinical and structural paradigm of Lacanian metaphor is the paternal metaphor, in which the Name-of-the-Father substitutes for the desire of the mother, producing the fundamental signification that organizes neurotic subjectivity (often called “phallic signification”).

In the formalization presented in Lacanian commentaries, Lacan gives an explicit transcription of the paternal metaphor as a substitution generating a new signification (with reference to Écrits p. 200).

In structural terms, this operation:

• inserts the paternal function as a symbolic operator that mediates the child’s relation to the maternal Other;
• introduces law and prohibition (including castration as symbolic operator);
• makes desire articulate itself as desire of the Other within the symbolic order;
• produces a foundational signification that organizes subsequent metaphorical substitutions.

Psychosis and foreclosure: failure of the paternal metaphor

In Psychosis, Lacan argues that the decisive issue is not repression but foreclosure (Verwerfung) of the Name-of-the-Father. Where foreclosure occurs, the paternal metaphor does not take place: the signifier is not integrated into the symbolic order, producing a structural hole that can precipitate delusional formations and hallucinations.

From this angle, metaphor is not only a mechanism of meaning but a condition for the stabilization of reality as symbolically mediated.

Metaphor and interpretation

Interpretation as work on the signifier

Because symptoms and other formations of the unconscious are structured like metaphors, Lacanian interpretation is oriented less toward explanatory translation (“this means that”) than toward interventions that affect the signifying chain: isolating equivocations, punctuating speech, and producing shifts in signification through the introduction or extraction of signifiers.

Lacan links this orientation to the analyst’s attention to the letter and to the logic of signification rather than to a psychology of underlying contents.

Metaphor beyond “meaning”: the drive dimension

Lacan also connects metaphor to the drive and to partial objects, indicating that substitution is not merely semantic but libidinally invested. A striking formulation often cited in this context is Lacan’s remark that “the anal level is the locus of metaphor—one object for another.”

This underscores a key Lacanian point: metaphor is not only a linguistic operation but a way in which enjoyment and loss (and thus desire) become knotted into signifying substitutions.

Comparative table

Dimension	Metaphor (Lacan)	Metonymy (Lacan)
Basic operation	Substitution (one signifier replaces another)	Combination/contiguity (signifiers link in a chain)
Freudian correlate	Condensation (Verdichtung)	Displacement (Verschiebung)
Effect on signification	Produces a new effect of meaning (crossing of the bar)	Maintains/slides meaning under the bar (deferral)
Paradigmatic clinical formation	Symptom as condensed signification (“the symptom is a metaphor”)	Desire as displacement along the chain (“desire is a metonymy”)
Structural stake	Knotting/stoppage; production of a new signified effect	Drift/slippage; persistence of lack in signification

Criticisms and discussions

Debates about Lacanian metaphor often focus on (a) the status of formalization (whether algebraic transcriptions clarify or obscure clinical realities), and (b) whether Lacan’s privileging of the signifier risks reducing affect and embodiment to linguistic structure. Lacanian responses typically emphasize that metaphor, for Lacan, is not “mere language” but the mode through which speaking beings are bound to loss, desire, and symptom formation—hence its simultaneously clinical and structural significance.

See Also

Metonymy (Lacan) Sliding of the signified Signifier

Signified Signification Condensation (Freud)

Displacement (Freud) Dream-work Repression

Symptom Paternal metaphor Name-of-the-Father Foreclosure