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THE UNCONSCIOUS AS GAP OR RUPTURE
The [[unconscious]] must "be apprehended in its experience of rupture, between [[perception]] and [[consciousness]], in that [[time|nontemporal locus]]... [[Freud]] calls [[scene|another scene]]."<ref>{{S11}}: 56</ref>
The [[unconscious]] manifests itself at those moments in which processes beyond [[consciousness|conscious thought]] disrupt [[speech]], points when [[language]] fails. [[Lacan]] defines the [[unconscious]] in terms of "impediment", "failure" and "splitting". The [[unconscious]] ''is'' precisely this [[gap]] or [[gap|rupture]] in the [[symbolic]] [[signifyin chain|chain]].
[[Freud]] distinguished between "[[word-presentations]]" -- the product of the secondary processes of [[consciousness|conscious thought]] - and "[[thing-presentations]]" - the product of the primary processes of the [[unconscious]].
These are very complicated ideas in Freud and he never explicitly spelt out what he meant by them.
That the unconscious is structured like a language is Lacan's central thesis and probably his most influential contribution to psychoanalysis
