ABSTRACT
It is characteristic of unconscious structures to include voices other than that of the first person: the unconscious discourse could, for example, take place in the alienated form of the second or third persons. The unconscious is a discourse which was pronounced in person and above all in the first person. It has very probably undergone modifications through repression and through the work of censorship during its return to consciousness, and undergoes further modifications at the hands of the only conceptual categories. The Lacanian conception, according to which the unconscious consists of signifiers which are repressed and replaced by others at the level of consciousness, also flows over into analytic practice. The unconscious is also a letter, another lettered system which insinuates itself into conscious discourse, propelling itself through the lacunae in that discourse. These lacunae are to be found in what Lacan designates the formations of the unconscious: dreams, mistakes, absentmindedness, and jokes.
