ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the radical difference between the processes of the unconscious and the separate reality of the ego. Self-examination is the pole of truth and responsibility. The demand for truth in examining one’s self stands in contrast to fantasy, which is rather lacking in respect for reality; in fact, fantasy is always trying to set itself up against reality’s demands. The subject’s point of enunciation is founded upon a dialectical relationship between experience and interpreting, where meaning is taken and then offered anew in the forward movement of the hermeneutic circle. Interpreting makes use of an individual and idiosyncratic repertoire of signs and narrathemes which furnish the subject’s questions, fantasies and narratives with a variety of thematic structures. The forward movement of meaning in the hermeneutic circle is at times unbearable to the ego with its omnipotent demand for constancy. The hypostatization of signification liberates meaning from the circle and fixates it.
