The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis

La chose freudienne, ou Sens du retour à Freud en psychanalyse
French title	La chose freudienne, ou Sens du retour à Freud en psychanalyse
English title	The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis
Year	1955
Text type	Lecture
Mode of delivery	Oral
First presentation	Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, November 7, 1955
First publication	La Psychanalyse (1956)
Collected in	Écrits (1966)
Text status	Authorial text
Original language	French
Psychoanalytic content
Key concepts	Freudian Thing • Return to Freud • Unconscious • Truth in psychoanalysis • Subject of enunciation
Themes	Transmission; institutional critique; truth and knowledge; psychoanalytic doctrine
Freud references	The Interpretation of Dreams • Beyond the Pleasure Principle • The Ego and the Id • From the History of an Infantile Neurosis
Related seminars	Seminar I • Seminar II • Seminar VII
Theoretical context
Period	Structuralist / linguistic period
Register	Symbolic

“The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis” (French: La chose freudienne, ou Sens du retour à Freud en psychanalyse) is a major theoretical essay by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in the mid-1950s and first published in French prior to its canonical inclusion in Lacan’s collected volume :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1} (1966). The text occupies a central position within Lacan’s sustained project of a “return to Freud,” a project that sought to re-establish the specificity of Freud’s discovery against what Lacan regarded as its systematic dilution within post-Freudian psychoanalysis.

The essay does not propose a historical return to Freud understood as doctrinal fidelity or exegetical orthodoxy. Rather, it advances a theoretical intervention aimed at isolating what Lacan calls *the Freudian Thing*—an irreducible kernel of Freud’s discovery that resists assimilation to psychological adaptation, ego normalization, or institutional consensus. In doing so, the text articulates a set of methodological, epistemological, and clinical stakes that would shape Lacanian psychoanalysis for decades to come.

Identification and Publication Context

Title and Dating

The French title, La chose freudienne, ou Sens du retour à Freud en psychanalyse, signals the dual orientation of the essay. The expression “the Freudian Thing” invokes both the conceptual object at stake and Freud’s own use of *das Ding* in his metapsychological writings, while the subtitle frames the essay as an inquiry into the meaning (*sens*)—rather than the slogan—of a return to Freud.

The text was composed during the early to mid-1950s, a period marked by intense institutional conflict within French psychoanalysis and by Lacan’s growing distance from the dominant currents of ego psychology. It circulated initially in journal and lecture form before being revised and integrated into Écrits in 1966, where it appears alongside other foundational programmatic texts such as “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.”

Inclusion in Écrits

The 1966 publication of Écrits by Éditions du Seuil consolidated Lacan’s reputation as a major theoretical figure and fixed the essay’s place within his corpus. Within that volume, “The Freudian Thing” functions as a strategic hinge text: it retrospectively clarifies the motivations of Lacan’s earlier interventions while projecting the stakes of his ongoing teaching in the seminar.

The essay’s inclusion in Écrits situates it at the intersection of polemic, theory, and institutional critique. It addresses not only Freud’s texts but also the state of psychoanalysis in the postwar period, particularly as shaped by Anglo-American ego psychology and its influence within the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA).

Historical and Institutional Circumstances

The composition of “The Freudian Thing” coincided with Lacan’s increasing marginalization within official psychoanalytic institutions. During this period, Lacan was contesting the prevailing training standards, technical norms, and theoretical assumptions endorsed by IPA-affiliated societies. His critique targeted what he saw as a progressive psychologization of Freud’s discovery, in which the unconscious was reinterpreted as a function of the ego and psychoanalysis was aligned with ideals of adaptation and normalization.

Against this background, the essay articulates a counter-position: Freud’s discovery is presented not as a therapeutic psychology but as a radical rupture in the understanding of subjectivity, language, and truth. The “return to Freud” thus functions as a critical operation aimed at re-opening the conceptual field of psychoanalysis rather than closing it around established techniques or institutional authorities.

Conceptual Overview

The Meaning of “the Freudian Thing”

At the center of the essay lies Lacan’s notion of *the Freudian Thing*. This term designates neither a doctrinal core nor a set of propositions that can be codified once and for all. Instead, it names the irreducible dimension of Freud’s discovery that persists across misreadings, adaptations, and institutional sedimentations.

For Lacan, the Freudian Thing is inseparable from the discovery of the unconscious as something that speaks. It refers to the fact that psychoanalysis encounters a form of truth that is not accessible to conscious intention, empirical observation, or psychological synthesis. This truth manifests itself through slips, dreams, symptoms, and formations of the unconscious, whose logic is linguistic rather than biological or developmental.

By invoking “the Thing,” Lacan emphasizes the resistance of Freud’s discovery to assimilation. The Freudian Thing is that which cannot be domesticated by explanatory psychology or reduced to a set of therapeutic goals. It marks a point of opacity within psychoanalytic knowledge that must be approached indirectly, through interpretation and the structures of language.

The “Return to Freud”

The essay explicitly rejects any understanding of the return to Freud as a call for reverence, repetition, or doctrinal restoration. Lacan insists that Freud himself was not a system-builder but an inventor whose texts record a series of theoretical acts. To return to Freud is therefore not to conserve a body of doctrine but to re-engage the disruptive logic of his discoveries.

In this sense, the return to Freud is a methodological orientation rather than a historical gesture. It entails reading Freud against the grain of later simplifications, attending to the conceptual tensions within his work, and refusing reconciliatory syntheses that obscure those tensions. Lacan presents the return as an act of reading that restores the problem-structure of Freud’s texts rather than their supposed solutions.

This orientation also functions polemically. By invoking Freud, Lacan challenges contemporary psychoanalysis to justify its departures from Freud’s fundamental insights, particularly where those departures serve institutional stability or therapeutic conformity.

Freud versus Post-Freudian Psychoanalysis

A central concern of the essay is the distinction between Freud’s discovery and its post-Freudian institutional developments. Lacan argues that much of post-Freudian theory—especially ego psychology—reoriented psychoanalysis toward the strengthening of the ego, the management of affects, and the promotion of social adaptation. In doing so, it displaced the unconscious from its central position and subordinated psychoanalysis to norms external to its own logic.

Against this trend, Lacan insists that Freud’s discovery cannot be reconciled with a psychology of the ego. The unconscious does not belong to the ego, nor is it oriented toward harmony or synthesis. It operates according to laws—condensation, displacement, metaphor, metonymy—that are irreducibly symbolic. The Freudian Thing thus stands as a point of resistance to the normalization of psychoanalysis as a helping profession or applied psychology.

Language, the Signifier, and the Unconscious

Although the essay predates some of Lacan’s later formalizations, it already situates language at the heart of Freud’s discovery. The Freudian Thing is inseparable from the fact that the unconscious is structured like a language—a formulation that Lacan would elaborate more explicitly in subsequent seminars.

In “The Freudian Thing,” language appears not as a tool used by the subject but as the medium through which the subject is constituted and divided. Symptoms, dreams, and analytic material are treated as signifying formations whose logic cannot be reduced to meaning alone. Misunderstanding, equivocation, and displacement are not obstacles to analysis but its very substance.

By foregrounding language, Lacan redefines the analytic task. Interpretation is no longer aimed at uncovering hidden contents behind speech but at engaging the signifier as such. The return to Freud is therefore also a return to the primacy of speech, against theoretical models that privilege adaptation, affect regulation, or ego mastery.

Theoretical and Historical Context

Critique of Ego Psychology

One of the primary targets of “The Freudian Thing” is ego psychology, particularly as developed in the United States and institutionalized within the IPA after Freud’s death. Lacan criticizes ego psychology for transforming psychoanalysis into a technique of adjustment, in which the analyst functions as an agent of normalization and the ego is treated as the seat of synthesis and reality-testing.

Lacan argues that this orientation represents a fundamental betrayal of Freud’s discovery. By centering the ego, ego psychology evacuates the unconscious of its radical alterity and aligns psychoanalysis with prevailing social norms. The Freudian Thing, by contrast, names precisely what resists such alignment: the disruptive effects of the signifier on the subject and the impossibility of total self-knowledge.

This critique situates the essay within broader debates about the direction of psychoanalysis in the postwar period, debates that would culminate in Lacan’s institutional break with the IPA in the early 1960s.

Freud’s Texts as Theoretical Acts

A distinctive feature of the essay is Lacan’s insistence that Freud’s writings must be approached as theoretical acts rather than as a doctrinal corpus. Freud’s texts are not neutral descriptions of psychological facts but interventions that introduce new objects, new questions, and new forms of truth.

This perspective underwrites Lacan’s method of close reading, in which apparent inconsistencies or shifts in Freud’s work are treated as sites of conceptual productivity rather than errors to be resolved. The return to Freud thus entails a renewed engagement with the tensions and impasses that structure Freud’s writings, particularly around sexuality, repression, and the unconscious.

By framing Freud’s work in this way, Lacan also distances himself from forms of psychoanalytic orthodoxy that appeal to Freud as an authority while neutralizing the disruptive force of his discoveries.

Relation to Lacan’s Early Seminars

“The Freudian Thing” is closely connected to Lacan’s early seminars of the 1950s, especially those devoted to Freud’s technical papers and to the function of speech and language in psychoanalysis. Themes developed in the essay—such as the primacy of the signifier, the critique of ego psychology, and the redefinition of analytic truth—would receive systematic elaboration in these seminars.

The essay can thus be read as a programmatic statement that crystallizes concerns already present in Lacan’s teaching while anticipating later developments. It occupies a transitional position between Lacan’s early engagement with Freud and the more formalized structural elaborations that would characterize his work in the 1960s.

Structuralism and the Re-reading of Freud

Finally, the essay participates in a broader intellectual context shaped by structural linguistics and structuralism, even as it maintains a critical distance from them. Lacan draws on insights from linguistics to re-articulate Freud’s discovery, but he resists reducing psychoanalysis to a linguistic model.

The Freudian Thing is not equivalent to language itself; it is that which emerges at the limits of language, through its failures, slips, and gaps. In this respect, the essay situates psychoanalysis in a complex relation to contemporary human sciences: neither reducible to them nor insulated from their conceptual advances.

Key Concepts and Arguments

“The Freudian Thing” advances a series of tightly interrelated arguments that together define Lacan’s understanding of Freud’s discovery and its stakes for psychoanalytic theory. Rather than presenting a linear doctrine, the essay isolates a set of conceptual fault lines—truth, language, knowledge, and transmission—around which psychoanalysis must continually reorient itself.

The Freudian Thing as an Irreducible Kernel

Lacan introduces *the Freudian Thing* as the name for what cannot be absorbed into a coherent psychological system. It designates the irreducible kernel of Freud’s discovery that persists despite attempts to normalize, systematize, or moralize psychoanalysis. This kernel is not a positive object but a structural remainder: something encountered in analytic practice that resists synthesis and closure.

In this respect, the Freudian Thing functions analogously to Freud’s own invocation of *das Ding* in his metapsychology, particularly in relation to desire and the limits of representation. Lacan emphasizes that Freud’s originality lay not in providing a new psychology of the person but in uncovering a dimension of subjectivity structured by lack, displacement, and repetition. The Freudian Thing names precisely this dimension, which cannot be reconciled with ideals of harmony, adaptation, or ego mastery.

By framing Freud’s discovery in this way, Lacan positions psychoanalysis as a practice oriented toward what does not work—slips, symptoms, impasses—rather than toward the restoration of equilibrium. Any theory or technique that claims to resolve these impasses once and for all is, from this perspective, already a betrayal of the Freudian Thing.

Speech, Language, and the Analytic Experience

A central argument of the essay concerns the primacy of speech and language in psychoanalysis. Lacan insists that Freud’s discovery cannot be separated from the fact that the unconscious manifests itself through speech. Dreams, parapraxes, symptoms, and free associations are not expressions of hidden contents lying behind language; they are linguistic formations governed by their own logic.

In “The Freudian Thing,” Lacan does not yet fully formalize the thesis that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” but the groundwork for that formulation is already clearly present. The unconscious is treated as a field in which signifiers operate independently of conscious intention. Meaning is never fully present; it is continually displaced, deferred, and fractured by the play of signifiers.

This emphasis has decisive consequences for analytic technique. Interpretation is not aimed at supplying meaning where it is lacking, nor at translating unconscious material into conscious understanding. Instead, interpretation intervenes in the chain of signifiers, producing effects that cannot be anticipated in advance. The analyst’s task is thus inseparable from listening to how something is said, not merely to what is said.

Truth, Knowledge, and Misunderstanding

Lacan draws a sharp distinction between truth and knowledge, a distinction that plays a crucial role in the essay. Knowledge, in the sense criticized by Lacan, refers to stabilized systems of explanation that claim to master their object. Truth, by contrast, appears only partially and obliquely, through formations that undermine mastery.

The Freudian Thing is aligned with truth rather than with knowledge. Freud’s discovery does not yield a body of positive knowledge about the psyche; it reveals a dimension in which truth emerges only through distortion, displacement, and misunderstanding. Symptoms, for example, are not failures of communication but formations in which a certain truth insists despite repression.

From this perspective, misunderstanding is not an accidental by-product of psychoanalysis but one of its fundamental conditions. Lacan insists that psychoanalysis must resist the temptation to clarify everything, since excessive clarification often functions as a defense against the very truth analysis seeks to engage. The return to Freud is therefore also a return to the recognition that psychoanalytic truth is incompatible with transparency and totalization.

Psychoanalysis, Science, and Discourse

Another major axis of the essay concerns the relation between psychoanalysis and science. Lacan rejects both the assimilation of psychoanalysis to the natural sciences and its relegation to a form of speculative philosophy. Freud’s discovery occupies a singular position: it introduces a new object—the unconscious—that does not conform to existing scientific models.

Lacan argues that psychoanalysis must be understood as a discourse with its own internal logic. Its object is constituted by speech, and its effects depend on the structure of the analytic situation rather than on experimental verification. Attempts to legitimize psychoanalysis by aligning it with empirical psychology or neurobiology risk erasing the specificity of the Freudian Thing.

At the same time, Lacan does not propose a rejection of science. Instead, he situates psychoanalysis as a critical interlocutor of scientific discourse, one that reveals the limits of scientific approaches to subjectivity. The Freudian Thing marks precisely the point at which scientific explanation encounters something that cannot be formalized without remainder.

Fidelity, Distortion, and Transmission

A recurring theme in the essay is the problem of transmission. Lacan argues that Freud’s discovery can be distorted not only through overt rejection but also through forms of fidelity that freeze it into doctrine. To transmit psychoanalysis is not to conserve a set of concepts unchanged but to preserve the conditions under which Freud’s questions remain alive.

This position has important consequences for psychoanalytic education and institutional life. Lacan is critical of training models that prioritize conformity, accreditation, and technical competence over engagement with the conceptual and clinical impasses of analysis. Such models tend to replace the Freudian Thing with standardized knowledge, thereby neutralizing its disruptive force.

The return to Freud is thus inseparable from a critique of how psychoanalysis is taught and authorized. Fidelity to Freud requires a willingness to tolerate uncertainty, division, and disagreement—conditions that institutions often seek to minimize.

Institutional and Clinical Implications

The arguments developed in “The Freudian Thing” are not purely theoretical; they have direct implications for psychoanalytic practice and organization. Lacan consistently links the fate of Freud’s discovery to the forms of institutional life that sustain or suppress it.

Implications for Psychoanalytic Training

Lacan’s insistence on the irreducibility of the Freudian Thing leads him to question prevailing models of psychoanalytic training. Training programs that emphasize the accumulation of knowledge, the internalization of norms, and the evaluation of competence risk transforming psychoanalysis into a technical profession rather than a practice grounded in the encounter with the unconscious.

Against this tendency, Lacan emphasizes the formative role of the analyst’s own analysis. What qualifies an analyst is not mastery of theory but a transformation in their relation to speech, desire, and truth. The return to Freud thus implies a rethinking of how analysts are formed and authorized, a theme that would later find institutional expression in Lacan’s proposals regarding analytic schools and procedures.

Critique of Institutional Normalization

The essay also articulates a broader critique of institutional normalization within psychoanalysis. Lacan argues that institutions tend to stabilize meaning, enforce consensus, and marginalize dissent. While such processes may be necessary for organizational survival, they are often inimical to the preservation of the Freudian Thing.

Institutional normalization manifests itself in the privileging of certain techniques, theoretical vocabularies, or clinical goals. In Lacan’s view, this privileging often serves to protect institutions from the unsettling implications of Freud’s discovery. The return to Freud therefore functions as a critical lever, exposing the gap between psychoanalysis as an institution and psychoanalysis as a practice oriented toward the unconscious.

Consequences for Clinical Practice and Ethics

Clinically, “The Freudian Thing” reinforces an ethic of restraint and listening. The analyst is not a guide toward adaptation or well-being but a participant in a discourse structured by lack and division. The analytic act does not aim at normalization but at allowing the subject to encounter the truth effects produced by their own speech.

This ethic entails a refusal of moralization and a skepticism toward therapeutic ideals imposed from outside the analytic situation. The analyst’s responsibility is not to correct the subject but to sustain the conditions under which something of the Freudian Thing can emerge. In this sense, Lacan links the ethics of psychoanalysis directly to its theoretical foundations.

Reception, Influence, and Interpretation

Although “The Freudian Thing” was initially received within a relatively limited circle, it quickly became a reference point for Lacan’s followers and critics alike. Its influence extends beyond its immediate historical context, shaping later developments in Lacanian theory and institutional practice.

Early Reception within Lacanian Circles

Within Lacanian circles, the essay was read as a clarifying statement of the stakes of the return to Freud. It provided a conceptual framework for understanding Lacan’s polemics against ego psychology and his insistence on the primacy of language. The text also served to articulate a shared orientation among those dissatisfied with mainstream psychoanalytic trends in the postwar period.

At the same time, the essay’s abstract style and polemical tone made it a difficult text, contributing to divergent interpretations even among Lacan’s closest interlocutors.

Influence on Later Lacanian Theory

Many of the themes introduced in “The Freudian Thing” would be developed more systematically in Lacan’s later work, particularly in his seminars of the 1960s. The distinction between truth and knowledge, the emphasis on discourse, and the critique of institutional normalization all become more formally articulated in subsequent years.

The essay is frequently cited in secondary literature as a key moment in Lacan’s elaboration of the return to Freud, alongside texts such as “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.” Commentators such as Bruce Fink and Jacques-Alain Miller have emphasized its role in defining the ethical and epistemological orientation of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Interpretive Frameworks and Debates

Scholarly interpretations of the essay often diverge on the question of how polemical its claims should be taken. Some readers emphasize its historical specificity, viewing it primarily as an intervention in mid-twentieth-century psychoanalytic debates. Others treat it as articulating a more general theory of psychoanalytic transmission that remains relevant beyond its original context.

Critics have occasionally accused Lacan of idealizing Freud or of replacing one form of orthodoxy with another. Defenders respond that the essay explicitly resists doctrinal closure and that its insistence on the Freudian Thing functions precisely as a safeguard against orthodoxy.

Related Texts and Cross-References

“The Freudian Thing” is closely connected to a constellation of Lacanian texts from the 1950s and 1960s that collectively define the contours of the return to Freud. These texts elaborate, formalize, and extend the arguments introduced in the essay, while situating them within Lacan’s evolving theoretical framework.

Closely Related Lacanian Essays

Among Lacan’s writings, the essay is most directly linked to “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” delivered in 1953 at the Rome Congress. Both texts articulate the primacy of speech and language in psychoanalysis and oppose psychologizing interpretations of Freud. Whereas “The Function and Field” introduces the linguistic orientation of Lacan’s project, “The Freudian Thing” sharpens its polemical edge by isolating what is at stake in Freud’s discovery as such.

Other essays in Écrits—including “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” and “Science and Truth”—can be read as theoretical extensions of concerns already present in “The Freudian Thing.” Together, these texts articulate a sustained critique of adaptationist psychology and establish psychoanalysis as a discourse structured by the signifier and oriented toward truth rather than knowledge.

Relation to the Seminars

The arguments of “The Freudian Thing” are inseparable from Lacan’s contemporaneous seminars, particularly those devoted to Freud’s technical papers and to the foundations of analytic practice. In Seminar I (*Freud’s Papers on Technique*) and Seminar II (*The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis*), Lacan elaborates in detail the critique of ego psychology that is programmatically stated in the essay.

Later seminars—especially Seminar XI (*The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis*)—provide a more systematic articulation of concepts that are only sketched in “The Freudian Thing,” such as the status of truth, the function of the signifier, and the ethics of psychoanalysis. The essay can thus be read as a nodal point linking Lacan’s early teaching to his later formalizations.

Conceptual Cross-References

Within a psychoanalytic encyclopedia, “The Freudian Thing” is conceptually linked to a number of core entries, including:

• Return to Freud – as a methodological and theoretical orientation
• Unconscious – understood as structured and articulated through speech
• Signifier – as the operative unit of analytic experience
• Truth (psychoanalysis) – distinguished from empirical knowledge
• Ego psychology – as the primary target of Lacan’s critique
• Transmission (psychoanalysis) – concerning training, institutions, and authorization
• Ethics of psychoanalysis – particularly the analyst’s relation to truth and desire

These cross-references underscore the essay’s function as a foundational text that informs multiple domains of Lacanian theory and practice.

Long-Term Influence and Legacy

Over time, “The Freudian Thing” has come to be regarded as one of Lacan’s most decisive programmatic statements. Its influence extends across theoretical, clinical, and institutional dimensions of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Impact on Lacanian Institutions

The essay’s critique of institutional normalization anticipated Lacan’s later interventions in the organization of psychoanalytic schools. Although “The Freudian Thing” predates the founding of the École Freudienne de Paris, its arguments foreshadow Lacan’s insistence that psychoanalytic institutions must remain oriented toward the preservation of Freud’s discovery rather than toward professional accreditation or consensus.

In this respect, the essay contributed to shaping a distinctive Lacanian institutional ethos, one that emphasizes transmission, ongoing theoretical work, and the irreducibility of the analytic experience to standardized procedures. Later debates around training, authorization, and the role of the analyst frequently invoke themes first articulated in this text.

Influence on Clinical Orientation

Clinically, “The Freudian Thing” reinforced an orientation toward listening, equivocation, and the singularity of the subject’s speech. By opposing therapeutic models aimed at adaptation or normalization, the essay helped define a Lacanian clinical ethic grounded in respect for the unconscious and its formations.

This orientation has influenced generations of Lacanian practitioners, for whom fidelity to Freud is understood not as adherence to technique but as attentiveness to the disruptive effects of speech in analysis. The essay thus occupies a lasting place in discussions of analytic ethics and the direction of the treatment.

Place in Secondary Literature

In the secondary literature, “The Freudian Thing” is frequently cited as a key text for understanding Lacan’s conception of the return to Freud. Commentators such as Élisabeth Roudinesco have situated the essay within the broader historical struggle over the meaning of Freud’s legacy in postwar psychoanalysis, while clinical-oriented readers have emphasized its implications for practice and training.

Scholarly readings often stress the essay’s refusal of closure. Rather than offering a final definition of Freud’s discovery, the text insists on maintaining an open relation to Freud’s questions. This feature has contributed to its enduring relevance, even as psychoanalytic theory and institutions have continued to evolve.

Criticisms and Points of Contention

The essay has also been the object of criticism. Some readers have argued that Lacan’s invocation of “the Freudian Thing” risks reifying Freud’s work or insulating it from critical revision. Others have questioned whether Lacan’s polemical opposition to ego psychology oversimplifies the diversity of post-Freudian developments.

Within Lacanian circles, debates have persisted over how strictly the return to Freud should be interpreted. These debates themselves attest to the essay’s function as a catalyst rather than a doctrinal endpoint: it provokes disagreement precisely because it refuses to settle the meaning of fidelity once and for all.

Conclusion

“The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis” occupies a foundational place in Lacan’s oeuvre and in the history of contemporary psychoanalysis. Written at a moment of institutional conflict and theoretical reorientation, the essay articulates a conception of Freud’s discovery as an irreducible event that resists assimilation to psychological, therapeutic, or institutional norms.

By insisting on the primacy of speech, the distinction between truth and knowledge, and the necessity of preserving the disruptive force of the unconscious, Lacan redefines what it means to be faithful to Freud. The return to Freud emerges not as a conservative gesture but as a critical practice, one that continually reopens the questions Freud introduced rather than closing them through doctrine.

As a result, “The Freudian Thing” continues to function as a reference point for debates about theory, practice, and transmission within psychoanalysis. Its enduring significance lies less in the answers it provides than in the orientation it establishes: an orientation toward what, in Freud’s discovery, remains resistant, unsettling, and irreducible.