Changes

In "La Lettre volée" (<i>Écrits</i>) Lacan states that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other," meaning that "one should see in the unconscious the effects of speech on the subject." The unconscious is the effect of the signifier on the subject - the signifier is what gets repressed and what returns in the formations of the unconscious. How then is it possible to reconcile desire linked to the signifier and to the Other with the libido, now an organ under the shape of the "lamella," the placenta, the part of the body from which the subject must separate in order to exist? A new conception of repetition comes into play, whose functionning stems from two forces: automatism on the side of the signifier and the missed yet desired encounter on the side of the drive, where <i>objet a</i> refers to the "impossible" Real (that as such cannot be assimilated). If transference is the enactment (<i>la mise en acte</i>) of the reality of the unconscious - what Lacan's deconstruction of the drive wants to bring to light - if desire is the nodal point where the motion of the unconscious, an untenable sexual reality, is also at work, what is to be done? The analyst's role is to allow the drive "to be made present in the reality of the unconscious": he must fall from the idealized position so as to become the upholder of <i>objet a</i>, the separating object.

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