Symptom

In the medical context, the symptom points at illness: in psychoanalysis it points at the unconscious. The symptom, in short, comes to shore up a certain assumption by establishing itself as the outcome of this assumption. Symptoms develop and get entrenched the more adaptive and normative patients try to be in disregard of their desires. By virtue of its distance from the source, the symptom, like metaphor or a fable, is an effective formulation of truth; it is a structure that represents the subject by means of an object. A similar logic can be distinguished in the workings of the symptom. A hysterical symptom, for instance, uses the body as though it were a myth that was telling a story. The Symbolic system can be seen as a super-symptom in the face of the Real; a symptom that supports the subject by enabling meaning and jouissance and desire at one and the same time.