Madness in English-Canadian Fiction - ub-dok - Universität Trier

theory using linguistic and semiological insight. In this recasting of Saussure and
Freud, Lacan called for renewed attention to Freudian texts and the revision of
psychoanalysis along structuralist lines. Freud already insisted that a future "college of
psychoanalysis" should not only teach disciplines familiar within medical faculties but
should "include branches of knowledge which are remote from medicine and which
the doctor does not come across in his practice: the history of civilisation, mythology,
the psychology of religion and the science of literature. Unless he is well at home in
these subjects, the analyst can make nothing of a large amount of his material"82.
Lacan's addition to this list would include linguistics. Meticulously working out the
implications made by Saussure and Freud, Lacan fathered a contemporary
psychoanalysis which became of major importance within and outwith of psychiatry.
One of the main reasons for this is that his writing proposes itself consciously as a
critique of all discourses and ideologies.
The rupture between the old and the new psychoanalysis is initiated through several
significant extensions of Saussure's sign theory. Lacan claims, for instance, that the
primordial position of the signifier and the signified is that of "distinct orders
separated initially by a barrier resisting signification"83. This strategic fracture of a
simple harmony between signifier and signified, between spoken word and its
intended concept, allows Lacan to hold to one side of the dividing edge and dwell on
the signifier.
Ultimately, Lacan will warn us not to "cling to the illusion that the signifier answers to
the function of representing the signified, or better, that the signifier has to answer for
its existence in the name of any signification whatever"84. In this crucial moment,
Lacan sets the signifier free of the signified. Henceforth we encounter a "sliding
signified" and "floating signifier". Celebrating this primordial difference as impassable,
the more intensely does his signifier not represent the signified, it need not signify at
all. That this insight has far-reaching consequences with regard to psychological
perspectives will become evident when placed in the following context.
Lacan points out that human subjects, as they acquire speech, are inserting themselves
into a pre-existing symbolic order and thereby submitting themselves to the systemic
pressures of that order. In adopting language, they enter into a network of pre-existent
signifiers and therefore allow their free instinctual energies to be operated upon and
organised. It is thus the peculiar privilege of man, the language-user, to remain
82 Freud, Sigmund: The Question of Lay Analysis.- In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud:
Vol. XX / ed. by James Strachey.- London: Hogarth Press, 1966-74.- p. 246
83 Lacan, Jacques: Écrits: a Selection.- Transl. by Alan Sheridan.- New York: Norton, 1977 [1966].- p. 149
84 Ibid., p. 150
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