ABSTRACT
Lacanian psychoanalytic theory is based upon the recent discoveries of structural anthropology and linguistics. This chapter describes the position of Lacanism in relation to the young branches of the human sciences from a panoramic point of view and allows the reader to understand the reasons for an exposition of the broad outlines of linguistics. Jacques Lacan's originality consists in having placed the Freudian theory of the unconscious on the order of the day, in having analysed it, that is, in accordance with contemporary structuralist method and having brought the light of linguistics to bear upon it. Lacan is indeed a structuralist then: the unconscious is the structure hidden beneath an apparently conscious and lucid self-disposition. The relationship between a signifier and its signified is effected through the mediation of the whole body of the signs of the language. According to Lacan's theories, the presence of this mediation will have a constitutive effect for the subject.
