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The questions of whether [[Freud]]'s views can be considered materialistic or not is difficult to answer.
On the one hand, he insisted on the importance of the physical substratum of all mental events, in keeping with the materialist axioms of the [[science|scientists]] whom he had most respected during his studies (principally Hermann Helmholtz and Ernst Brücke). On the other hand, he opposed Charcot's attempts to explain all [[hysterical]] [[symptoms]] by reference to lesions in the brain, distinguished psychical reality from material reality, and constantly emphasized the role of experience rather than hereditary heredity in the aetiology of nervous illness.
These two trends often converge in his writings in an uneasy alliance, as in the following sentence:
<blockquote>Analysts are at bottom incorrigble incorrigible mechanists and materialists, even though they seek to avoid robbing the mind and spirit of their still unrecognized characteristics.<ref>{{F}} 1941d. (1921). [[SE]] XVIII p.179</ref></blockquote>
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However, as with [[Freud]], [[Lacan]]'s declarations of [[materialism]] are highly complex. It is clear in [[Lacan]]'s earliest statements on the subject that he conceives of [[materialism]] in a very particular way. In 1936, for example, he argues that [[materialism]] does not imply a rejection of the categories of intentionality and meaning, <ref>{{Ec}} p. 76-8</ref> and he rejects the simplistic idea of 'matter' as "a naive form which has been left behind by authentic materialism."<ref>{{Ec}} p.90</ref>
On these grounds he declares that the importance he attributes to [[language]] is perfectly compatible with historical [[materialism]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.875-6</ref>
[[Lacan]]'s [[materialism]] is thus a [[materialism]] of the [[signifier]]:
<blockquote>"the point of view I am trying to maintian maintain before you involves a certain materialism of the elements in question, in the sense that the signifiers are well and truly embodied, and materialized."<ref>{{S3}} p.289</ref></blockquote>
However, the materiality of the [[signifier]] does not refer to a tangible inscription but to its indivisibility:
It is [[Lacan]]'s "[[materialism|materialism of the signifier]]" which leads him to give "a materialist definition of the phenomenon of consciousness."<ref>{{S2}} p. 40-52</ref>
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[[Lacan]]'s claims that his theory of the [[signifier]] is a materialist thoery theory are disputed by [[Derrida]], who argues that [[Lacan]]'s concept of the [[letter]] betrays an implicit idealism.<ref>Derrida. 1975.</ref>
