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A whole [[neurosis]] could be organized by words and the relation between them. The case of the [[Rat Man]] discussed by [[Freud]] shows how a massive network of [[symptom]]s, compulsions and actions depended on the links between the words ''Spielratte'' (gambler), ''heiraten'' (to marry) and ''raten'' (instalments). ''Words became the very stuff of symptoms, the fabric of the life and torment of human beings''.
=====EditSignifiers and Signified=====Crucial to Lacan's programme of a return to Freud is the distinction between [[signifier]] and [[signified]]. According to a well-known definition, a ''a [[signifier]] is an acoustic image'' ( like a word, ''a [[signified]] is a concept''. The [[signified]] has a kind of priority and we use [[signifiers]] to gain access to [[signified]]s: or, put more simply, to say what we mean. A word gives us access to a meaning. The passage from word to meaning seems simple enough. We can ask for some object, the listener will understand our meaning and respond with the object. Language is thus all about communicating with each other. We use words to convey meanings and intentions.
But Lacan saw things differently. Rather than supposing a transparency between [[signifier]] and [[signified]], an easy access from [[word]] to [[meaning]], he claimed there was a real barrier, a [[resistance]]. (A word does not reveal its meaning so simply. Rather, it leads on to other words in a [[linguistic]] [[chain]], just like one [[meaning]] itself leads to others.)
(The [[Rat Man]]'s ''raten'' does not point to the meaning "instalments" but to other linguistic elements like ''heiraten'' and ''Spielratte'', even though he might not have been aware of these links at all. The group of meanings is organized by the links between the words. There is thus ''a priority of the signifier'', of the material, verbal element in psychic life.)
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