ABSTRACT
The basic (Freudian) thesis is that something (a perception, an idea) traumatic is erased ("repressed") from memory and replaced by a fictive creation (fantasy, delusion), yet the undesirable truth "insists" on making its presence known by returning to affect its subject in the form of a symptom. The variations immanent in this structure manifest in all manner of neurosis, perversion, and psychosis. Lacan realized that this unconscious structure is that of language, thus "universal" for all speaking beings. The effect of language on its subjects is "castration" – a loss of jouissance (libido, satisfaction) symbolized by loss of penis. The primal jouissance is called "narcissism"; the feeling of power and life-instinct. This libidoinstinct is lost when humans become conscious of their finitude upon induction into the social world, but it persists through fantasy and delusion created to deny the necessity of limitation and inevitability of death. This drama and trauma of becoming conscious and losing or recovering narcissistic (imaginary, total) satisfaction is repeated every generation. The elementary event of repression and formation of the unconscious is thus the denial of truth and creation of a lie to circumvent castration.
