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If 'The [[Mirror]] [[Stage]]' represented [[Lacan]]'s first innovation within the field of [[psychoanalysis]], it was one that remained recognizably within the limits of accepted [[theory]] and [[practice]]. It was almost 15 years before a distinctively [[Lacanian]] [[reading]] of psychoanalysis began to emerge when, in 1951, Lacan made his call for a '[[return]] to [[Freud]]'. Two years later, at the Rome Congress of Romance [[Language]] [[Psychoanalysts]], Lacan delivered a paper entitled 'The Function and Field of [[Speech]] and Language in Psychoanalysis' (1977b [1956]), subsequently known as 'The Rome [[Discourse]]'. This paper set out his major concerns for the following decade, the [[distinction]] between speech and language, an [[understanding]] of the [[subject]] as distinct from the I and, above all, the elaboration of the central [[concepts]] of the [[signifier]] and the [[symbolic]] [[order]]. Also in 1953, Lacan and a group of colleagues [[left]] the [[Paris]] [[Psychoanalytical|PsychoAnalytical ]] [[Society]] to [[form]] the Société Française de [[Psychanalyse]] (SFP). The [[Rome Discourse]] came to be seen as the founding document of the new [[school]] and of a new direction in psychoanalysis.

This chapter focuses upon Lacan's [[work]] in the 1950s, when he placed his greatest emphasis on the [[role]] of language in psychoanalysis and formulated his most important [[thesis]]: that the [[unconscious]] is [[structured]] like a language. This was an extraordinarily innovative period for Lacan and he introduced many of the concepts that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career. In order to [[help]] you [[understand]] these concepts and Lacan's transformation of [[them]], this chapter will [[outline]] the major influences from this period and show how Lacan drew on a field of study known as [[Structuralism]] and on [[linguistic]] theory. In so doing the chapter provides the framework for a more detailed [[discussion]] of the unconscious and [[The Subject|the subject ]] in the following chapter. I will briefly introduce Structuralism before outlining Claude Lévi-[[Strauss]]'s (1908-) elementary [[structure]] of kinship, as this provides the basis for understanding Lacan's conception of [[the symbolic]] order and the [[formation]] of the unconscious. [[Lévi-Strauss]]'s [[structural]] [[anthropology]] was facilitated by the work of the Swiss [[linguist]] Ferdinand de [[Saussure]] (1857-1913) and it was through Lévi-Strauss that Lacan began to read [[linguistics]]. In the [[process]] he made radical and farreaching changes to Saussure's [[concept]] of the linguistic [[sign]], completely reversing any conventional understanding of the [[relationship]] between the [[speaking]] subject and language. Finally, we will look at the Russian linguist Roman [[Jakobson]]'s (1896-1982) work on [[metaphor]] and [[metonymy]], as this was crucially important for Lacan's conceptualization of [[desire]]. Exploring these influences will help you understand Lacan's conception of the subject as constituted in and through language. The chapter concludes with Lacan's [[analysis]] of [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s short story The Purloined [[Letter]] as this clearly illustrates what he calls the subject as the subject of the signifier.

From the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss, therefore, Lacan derives the [[idea]] that what characterises the human [[world]] is [[The Symbolic|the symbolic ]] function - a function that intervenes in all aspects of our lives. Furthermore, in an introduction to the work of [[another]] anthropologist, Marcel [[Mauss]] (1872-1950), Lévi-Strauss suggested that 'what is called the unconscious is merely an empty [[space]] in which the symbolic function achieves [[autonomy]]', that is to say, a space where '[[symbols]] are more real than what they [[symbolize]]' (Roudinesco 1999:211). In the 1950s Lacan wanted to re-establish psychoanalysis as a [[science]] and, in order to do so, he first had to [[identify]] what was specific about its [[object]] of study, the unconscious, and how one could go about studying it. Lévi-Strauss's insight into the autonomy of the symbolic function was to provide Lacan with a crucial step in his attempt to establish [[Freudian]] psychoanalysis on a more philosophically and scientifically firm footing. But to make this move fully Lacan needed to make one more [[theoretical]] detour - a detour through linguistics.

Saussure argued, however, that words cannot refer to specific phenomena in the [[material]] world, as this assumes that there is a [[natural]], [[organic]], relation between words and what they represent. As he pointed out, if I [[speak]] the word 'tree' or '[[chair]]' we will all immediately conjure up conceptions of trees or chairs, but these [[images]] do not actually refer to a specific tree or chair in the material world. Instead, we are all thinking about different trees and chairs. What the word 'tree' refers to is not a 'thing' - a real tree - but a concept of a tree. We must, therefore, bracket the term 'referent' and put the notion that language refers to substantive phenomena in [[The Real|the real ]] world to one side.

Lacan accepted the arbitrary [[Nature of the Linguistic Sign|nature of the linguistic sign ]] but questioned two of the fundamental premises of [[Saussurean]] linguistics: the indivisibility of the sign and the prioritization of the signified over the signifier. In a famous example from 'The [[Agency]] of [[the Letter]] in the Unconscious, or [[Reason]] Since Freud' (1977c [1957]) Lacan dismisses the usual Saussurean illustration of the functioning of the sign, that is, the picture of a tree, and replaces it with another:

In the previous chapter we saw how Lacan distinguished between the ego and the subject. The ego is an '[[imaginary]] function' formed primarily through the subject's relationship to their own [[body]]. The subject, on the other hand, is constituted in the symbolic order and is determined by language. There is always a disjunction, according to Lacan, between the subject of [[enunciation]] and the subject of the [[utterance]]; in other words, the subject who speaks and the subject who is spoken. Following the linguist Emile Benveniste's (1902-76) conception of 'I' as a [[shifter]] - as having no specific referent but in [[The Act|the act ]] of speech designating the person who says 'I' - Lacan argued that the 'I' in speech does not refer to anything stable in language at all. The 'I' can be occupied by a number of different phenomena: the subject, the ego or the unconscious. For example, in what Lacan called '[[empty speech]]', the 'I' would correspond to the ego; in '[[full]] speech' it corresponds to the subject; while at other [[times]] it corresponds to neither subject nor ego. This is what Lacan means when he says I is an other, that is to say, 'I' is not 'me'; these two terms do not refer to the same entity; the subject is not the same as the individual person - it is [[decentred]] in relation to the individual. In short, Lacan de-essentializes the 'I' and prioritizes the symbolic, the signifier, over the subject. It is the structure of language that speaks the subject and not the other way around. Lacan summarizes this in his famous [[statement]], the subject is that which is represented by one signifier to another. The [[seminar]] on The [[Purloined Letter]] is nothing less than an exposition of this, whereby the subject is caught up in the chain of signification and it is the signifier that marks the subject, that defines the subject's position within the symbolic order.

Lacan's seminar on [[The Purloined Letter]] was first delivered in 1954. It was written up the following year and formed the introductory essay to the original French publication of the [[Écrits]], although it was removed from later editions. As Benvenuto and Kennedy point out, placing [[The Seminar|the seminar ]] on Poe at the beginning of the Écrits served a [[dual]] function: it both represented what was to follow and, more importantly, it established a particular mode of reading. In 'order to read Lacan, the story seems to be saying, one must follow the path of the signifier, and the [[remainder]] of Écrits is fundamentally concerned with the laws of the signifier' (Benvenuto and Kennedy 1986:23-4). The 1954-5 seminar series was given the overall title The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the [[Technique]] of Psychoanalysis and concerned Freud's late metapsychological [[text]] Beyond the [[Pleasure]] [[Principle]] (1984b [1920]). Lacan was primarily concerned with Freud's idea of [[repetition]] [[compulsion]], that is, the compulsive urge to [[repeat]] unpleasant experiences in [[apparent]] disregard of the [[pleasure principle]]. Lacan called this process 'repetition automatism' and associated it with his idea of the [[insistence]] of the [[signifying chain]]. Lacan's [[seminar on The Purloined Letter]] is an illustration of this thesis, that is, the insistence of the [[Signifying Chain|signifying chain ]] and the determination of the subject by the signifier.

Lacan observes that the King and 'the detectives have so immutable a notion of the real' (1988c [1956]: 39) that they fail to notice what is beneath their very noses. This is what Lacan calls the 'realist's imbecility' or a naive [[empiricism]] that thinks that the world is given and we have a direct, unmediated, relationship to it. The second position is that of the seer. In this position the subject sees both that the first position is blind and unaware of what is happening and that the third position is fully aware of what is unfolding and therefore holds the [[power]]. But in this position the subject believes that what is hidden (the secrets of the letter) can remain hidden and therefore 'delude' him/herself that it is they who possess the signifier (the letter). In the second position, then, the subject occupies an essentially [[narcissistic]] relation to the letter and this corresponds to [[The Imaginary|the imaginary ]] [[phase]] we outlined in the previous chapter. The third position is symbolic and in this position the subject 'discerns the role of structure in the situation and acts accordingly' (Muller and Richardson 1988:63). This is the position of the Minister in the first scene and Dupin in the second. Both figures can see what is taking place in front of them, they understand the implications of the letter, and moreover they [[know]] how to act. This is the position of the subject in the symbolic order; a subject who understands their situation within a larger structure and the function of that structure in determining their actions.