ABSTRACT
Lacan conceives of the id as the unconscious origin of speech, the symbolic ‘it’ beyond the imaginary ego (the French term ça used by Lacan is much closer to Freud’s Es, both being ordinary terms in everyday use, unlike the Latin id used in the Standard Edition). Thus whereas Groddeck states that ‘the affirmation “I live” is only conditionally correct, it expresses only a small and superficial part of the fundamental principle “Man is lived by the It”’ (Groddeck, 1923:5), Lacan’s view could be summed up in similar terms, only replacing the verb ‘to live’ with the verb ‘to speak’; the affirmation ‘I speak’ is only a superficial part of the fundamental principle ‘Man is spoken by it’. Hence the phrase which Lacan frequently uses when discussing the id; ‘it speaks’ (le ça parle) (e.g. S7, 206). The symbolic nature of the id, beyond the imaginary sense of self constituted by the ego, is what leads Lacan to equate it with the term ‘subject’. This equation is illustrated
by the homophony between the German term Es and the letter S, which is Lacan’s symbol for the subject (E, 129; see SCHEMA L).
