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[[Lacan]]'s existentialist leanings show in his [[development ]] of the antirealism he finds in [[Freudian ]] [[writing ]] [[about ]] the [[contents ]] of the [[unconscious]]. One can argue that if the [[psyche ]] is shaped under the joint influence of (i) the interaction between the [[environment ]] and the organism; and (ii) the significances attached to the brain—world brain—[[world]] interaction, then, the contents of the psyche may [[change ]] over [[time ]] as a result of [[self]]-transformations in the [[subject]]. And if the psyche is a holistic [[system ]] (the manifestation of a multiply interconnected multileveled associationist system) then those changes could be quite profound. The possibility (downplayed by [[Freud]]) is that, as one's grasp of [[language ]] and the complexities of [[social ]] [[life ]] are refined, one's [[psychic ]] life and its contents, even at the level of unconscious, is reconfigured.

This is meat and drink to existentialists (such as [[Sartre]]) who argue that the inertia and "thingness"([[being]]-[[in-itself]]) of the unconscious [[mind ]] represents a major defect in Freudian [[theory]]. Existentialists argue that the articulation of psychic or [[mental ]] [[content ]] implicates the [[conscious ]] subject and that the deterministic or [[biologically ]] driven Freudian unconscious is a [[myth]]. Indeed, the holism of a connectionist system yields a very plausible [[reading ]] of this [[claim]].

At certain points, the conjoint effect of the [[encounter ]] with the environment and the higher cognitive [[structure ]] introduced by [[signification ]] might result in indeterminate (but causally potent) psychic [[material ]] functioning as envisaged [End Page 64] by Freud. The [[work ]] of [[psychotherapy ]] would then be to enable the [[individual ]] to confront and articulate this material so that the consciously lived [[narrative ]] more adequately integrates important moments of the ongoing encounter between subject and world. If we import associationist holism into this, then we see that the contents of the mind are radically subject to revision as long as they can be accessed in a sufficiently potent manner.

Both Lacan and Jaspers pick up the hints of antirealism in Freud's writing about the unconscious so as to open the way for a view of this kind. But Lacan also imports a variety of [[structuralism]], so that any tendency to see the existential individual as transcendent of actual worldly [[existence ]] is undercut.