ABSTRACT
Solms focuses on the Id, whereas Bazan and Lacan focus more on the unconscious. To Lacan, it is a by-product of symbolic language and it defines man as a sick animal. He is unknowingly determined by an Other around and above him. Animals also have language, but it is an analogous and imaginary language and not a digital language, based on law and convention and law as a convention. Lacan stresses ‘that a discontinuity between animal and human psychology is far from our thought’. The real, the imaginary and the symbolic are inextricably intertwined, yet man has a fundamental discord or gap. This inner divide has several logical origins and consequences. To Lacan, nothing comes naturally to man. The unconscious is the discourse of the big Other that inhabits and influences us. That the resulting identity is fabricated and not intrinsic is debatable. A difference between need, demand and desire is erased in a too-naturalistic account. Symbolic and imaginary goods are at the heart of human happiness.
