Position de l’inconscient

The Position of the Unconscious
French title	Position de l’inconscient
English title	The Position of the Unconscious
Year	1960
Text type	Conference paper / theoretical essay
Mode of delivery	Oral and written
First presentation	International Colloquium on the Unconscious, Royaumont, 1960
First publication	Écrits (1966)
Collected in	Écrits (1966)
Text status	Authorial text
Original language	French
Psychoanalytic content
Key concepts	Unconscious • Signifier • Subject of the enunciation • Subject of the statement • Repression • Symbolic order • Time of the unconscious
Themes	Structure of the unconscious; linguistic turn in psychoanalysis; temporal logic of the unconscious; position of the subject; Freudian return
Freud references	The Interpretation of Dreams • The Unconscious • The Ego and the Id
Related seminars	Seminar XI • Seminar XII
Theoretical context
Period	Structuralist / linguistic period
Register	Symbolic • Imaginary • Real

Position de l’inconscient ("Position of the Unconscious") is a major theoretical essay by Jacques Lacan, first presented in 1960 at the Bonneval Colloquium and later published in Écrits (1966). The essay marks a pivotal development in Lacan’s articulation of the unconscious as a function of language, firmly distinguishing his structuralist re-reading of Freud from both classical Freudian metapsychology and prevailing psychological models of the time. This text constitutes a decisive moment in Lacan’s “return to Freud,” particularly as it anticipates many of the conceptual formulations elaborated in Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964).

In Position de l’inconscient, Lacan offers a rigorous definition of the unconscious not as a psychic locality but as a position within a signifying structure. The unconscious is thus conceived not as a hidden realm of repressed content, but as a function produced by the interplay of language and subjectivity. This reconceptualization has significant implications for the theory of the subject, the function of repression, and the ethics of psychoanalytic interpretation.

Historical and Theoretical Context

Lacan’s essay was composed during a period of institutional and theoretical transition. The 1960 Bonneval Colloquium, which brought together psychoanalysts and philosophers (including Jean Laplanche and Serge Leclaire), served as the immediate context for the text’s presentation. Lacan’s contribution was aimed at both defending and extending Freud’s legacy against the backdrop of the rising influence of ego psychology and adaptive models of the psyche.

One of Lacan’s central goals was to clarify the status of the unconscious in psychoanalytic theory by drawing a sharp distinction between the Freudian unconscious and various notions of the “not-conscious” circulating in psychology, such as automatized behavior or pre-conscious reflexes. As Lacan states explicitly, the unconscious is not merely what lacks the qualification of consciousness: “the unconscious as psychoanalysis knows it, did not exist in pre-Freudian times.”

The essay responds to two simultaneous pressures:

1. The need to theorize the unconscious in structural and linguistic terms, reflecting Lacan’s broader engagement with Saussurean linguistics and structuralism.
2. The urgency to differentiate psychoanalysis from psychology, which Lacan criticizes for its ideological servitude to social norms and its misrecognition of the subject through the mirror of the ego.

Lacan insists that the unconscious must be theorized against the ego-centered models dominant in the mid-20th century, including the belief that consciousness is a unified, self-transparent phenomenon. Instead, Lacan identifies the subject of the unconscious as split, decentered, and structurally produced by language.

Overview of the Essay

Position de l’inconscient develops a central thesis: the unconscious is not a thing, but a concept—more precisely, a position within the symbolic order where the subject is constituted through the operation of the signifier. The unconscious is thus an effect of language, not a repository of instinctual drives or primitive mental content. Lacan writes that the unconscious is a “concept founded on the trail left by that which operates to constitute the subject.”

Lacan criticizes both psychological and Cartesian assumptions about the psyche. He rejects the idea that the unconscious is an entity separable from consciousness in a topographical or substantial sense. He also critiques the Cartesian cogito as a model for self-certainty and unity. For Lacan, the cogito represents not a foundation but a rupture: “consciousness is heterotopically distributed”, and its only homogeneous function lies in the imaginary capture of the ego in the mirror stage.

Moreover, Lacan’s essay distinguishes sharply between Freud’s topographical model (unconscious–preconscious–conscious) and his own structural-linguistic reformulation. While Freud’s work remained entangled in a spatial metaphor, Lacan emphasizes the temporal and discursive nature of the unconscious. The unconscious is not hidden somewhere “beneath” consciousness, but instead emerges in the gaps, cuts, and contradictions of speech and signification.

The Position of the Unconscious

The title itself signals Lacan’s departure from a topographic metaphor: “position” here refers to a structural place within a chain of signifiers, not a psychic container. The unconscious is constituted in relation to this chain, and it is the signifier, not the drive or representation, that becomes primary.

Lacan’s fundamental innovation lies in declaring that the unconscious is structured like a language, meaning that its operations are governed by rules of substitution (metaphor) and combination (metonymy), rather than by instinctual energy flows. Freud’s mechanisms of condensation and displacement are thus reinterpreted as metaphorical and metonymic effects of the signifier.

The unconscious “takes place” only in speech; it insists (it returns), but does not exist in itself. In Lacan’s terms, “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.” The Other here is not merely another person but the symbolic structure—language, law, culture—within which the subject is alienated and constituted. This Other “speaks” the subject, who is spoken rather than speaking. As Lacan famously states, the unconscious is what responds when we are not speaking.

Language, Subjectivity, and the Signifier

Lacan’s theory of subjectivity in this essay builds on his long-standing thesis of the split subject ($\bar{S}$), who is divided between the subject of the statement (énoncé) and the subject of enunciation (énonciation). The “I” who speaks is not identical with the “I” spoken, and the unconscious is located in the discrepancy between these two positions.

The subject of the unconscious is produced by a cut in the signifying chain, a “bar” between signifier and signified. This cut, or suture, marks the non-coincidence of the subject with itself. The subject emerges where meaning fails, where the signifier short-circuits its supposed referent. In this way, Lacan posits the truth of the subject as the failure of representation.

This structural view aligns with Lacan’s broader anti-humanist epistemology: subjectivity is not foundational but derived, not self-transparent but radically alienated. The “I” is a shifter, a linguistic placeholder that does not refer to any fixed entity. As such, the subject “comes into being by disappearing from the statement”, a paradox Lacan illustrates with grammatical markers like the French expletive ne, whose absence or presence alters the tone of enunciation without modifying content.

The subject thus appears only in the gaps and failures of speech, in slips, jokes, repetitions, and contradictions—phenomena Freud had already explored, but which Lacan recodes as effects of signification.

Temporal Logic and the Time of the Unconscious

A critical aspect of Lacan’s argument in Position de l’inconscient is that the unconscious does not operate as a stable “system” in time, as Freud’s topographical model might suggest. Instead, the unconscious functions discontinuously, surfacing and receding in a process that Lacan describes in terms of “opening” and “closing.” This structural temporality replaces the spatial metaphor of layers or regions within the psyche with a concept of pulsation or momentary insistence.

Lacan writes that the unconscious “opens and closes in accordance with the temporal pulsation introduced by the intervention of the signifier.” This implies that the unconscious is not always active, nor is it constantly accessible. Rather, it “insists”—that is, it returns, intrudes, and is evoked—under specific conditions, particularly those created in the psychoanalytic situation.

This leads to the paradoxical claim that the unconscious only exists when interpreted. It is not “there” waiting to be discovered, but emerges when structured by speech. Its truth is retroactively constituted, not pre-existent. This logic reflects Lacan’s engagement with the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit (deferred action), wherein meaning arises after the fact, once earlier events are re-signified by later ones.

The Subject of the Enunciation and the Subject of the Statement

One of the most significant contributions of Position de l’inconscient is Lacan’s formal distinction between the subject of the enunciation (le sujet de l’énonciation) and the subject of the statement (le sujet de l’énoncé). This distinction derives from linguistic pragmatics and grammatical theory, but Lacan radicalizes it by grounding it in the structure of the unconscious.

• The subject of the statement is the grammatical “I” that appears in a declarative utterance.
• The subject of the enunciation, however, is the unconscious position from which the statement is issued—a position that the speaker may be unaware of.

The analyst listens not to what the analysand says in terms of propositional content, but to the signifying operations that betray the unconscious subject of the enunciation. In other words, what matters is not only what is said, but how and from where the speaking is structurally taking place.

This model has profound consequences for psychoanalytic technique. It challenges any interpretive model that assumes the subject knows what they are saying, or that meaning is transparently communicable. Instead, interpretation must focus on the gap between enunciation and statement—a gap where the unconscious speaks.

Clinical Implications and Analytic Technique

In Position de l’inconscient, Lacan strongly critiques prevailing currents in psychoanalysis that had adopted an ego-psychological, adaptationist, or interpersonal orientation. He opposes the view of the analyst as a supportive ego who helps the analysand adapt to reality, insisting instead that the analyst must be the “cause of the subject’s desire”, not its manager or mirror.

Lacan’s structural account of the unconscious demands that analytic interpretation be based on the signifier, not on insight or empathy. The analyst must attend to slips, ambiguities, repetitions, and contradictions in the analysand’s discourse, treating these as points of structural tension rather than symptoms to be resolved or understood cognitively.

Moreover, Lacan insists that the unconscious speaks, but only when the analyst holds open the space for its enunciation. The unconscious is not discovered, revealed, or decoded—it is posited through the act of interpretation. The analyst must maintain a position of non-knowledge, or savoir-y-faire, in order to allow the analysand’s own truth to emerge in the dialectic of speech.

This clinical position aligns with Lacan’s later emphasis on the analyst’s desire as the linchpin of the analytic process. The analyst must not desire to know or master the analysand’s truth but must occupy the place of the Other in a way that sustains the unconscious’s emergence.

Scholarly Reception and Interpretation

Lacan’s Position de l’inconscient has been extensively commented upon in Lacanian and post-Lacanian scholarship. While it is not as widely read outside of specialist circles as some of his other essays (e.g., “The Mirror Stage” or “The Function and Field of Speech and Language”), it is recognized as one of his most conceptually dense and foundational texts.

Bruce Fink

In The Lacanian Subject, Bruce Fink emphasizes the structuralist rigor of Lacan’s formulation of the unconscious in this essay. Fink notes that Lacan’s argument helps to “extricate the unconscious from the vague domain of the ‘not-conscious’,” defining it instead as a position within the symbolic—a move that helps preserve the radical alterity of the unconscious.

Stijn Vanheule et al.

In Reading Lacan’s Écrits, Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook, and Calum Neill contextualize the essay within Lacan’s engagement with both Freud and structural linguistics. They highlight the essay’s refusal to treat the unconscious as a “second mind” or concealed intention, instead stressing its emergence through the interplay of repression, metaphor, and signifier substitution.

Jacques-Alain Miller

Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan’s primary editor and commentator, views this essay as a threshold between Lacan’s earlier focus on the mirror stage and ego formation, and his later elaborations of discourse theory and object a. For Miller, the notion that the unconscious is a “position” rather than a “system” paves the way for a topological and ethical rethinking of psychoanalytic technique.

Legacy and Influence

The theoretical innovations of Position de l’inconscient resonate across many subsequent developments in Lacanian theory and post-structuralist thought. The essay anticipates Lacan’s later work on the four discourses, the matheme, and topological structures (e.g., the Borromean knot), all of which are grounded in a conception of the subject as divided, barred, and constituted through language.

In clinical praxis, the essay has contributed to the formalization of a Lacanian analytic ethic grounded in desire, not adaptation, and has served as a cornerstone for training analysts in the Lacanian orientation. Its impact also extends into fields such as philosophy, literary theory, and critical cultural studies, where Lacan’s critique of the Cartesian cogito and his theory of signification have been widely influential.

Lacan’s emphasis on the structure of speech, the function of interpretation, and the ethical position of the analyst in this essay remains a foundational contribution to psychoanalytic thought. Position de l’inconscient thus marks a decisive moment in the development of a structural psychoanalysis, in which the unconscious is not what lies beneath, but what speaks through—and sometimes despite—the subject.