ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to compare the fundamental components of material structure and ideal content. On the one hand there is the symbolic representative of the subject, as a physical signifier in the signifying real structure of the unconscious. On the other hand there is the social representation of an object, as psychic information in the signified imaginary content of consciousness. The chapter discusses why this conscious representation of an object can only be gathered, in the analyzed discourse, from its unconscious representatives, which are always the representatives of a particular subject. It examines how these representatives link up and make up the real structure of the outside world, the literal exteriority of the unconscious, the discourse of the other where the subject exists. The master-signifier is 'the first signifier, the unary signifier', which 'emerges in the field of the Other' and 'represents the subject for another signifier'.
