Changes

The [[formation]]s of the [[unconscious]] are those circumstances in which the [[law]]s of the [[unconscious]] are most discernible: the [[joke]], the [[dream]], the [[symptom]], the [[lapsus]] ([[parapraxis]]). [[Freud]] referred to the fundamental mechanisms involved in the [[formation]]s of the [[unconscious]] as [[condensation]] and [[displacement]], which [[Lacan]] redefines as [[metaphor]] and [[metonymy]]. With the former, the play of [[signifier]]s creates [[sense]] in nonsense in relation to [[truth]]. The latter reveals the [[lack]] of a [[word]], "an item of waste sent like a ball between [[code]] and [[message]]." In this [[lack]] [[substitute]] [[word]]s appear and function like "the [[metonymic]] ruins of the [[object]]."

== English ==

|The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 5

Formations of the Unconscious