The significance of Jacques Lacan

The contemporary French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, has offered a reinterpretation of basic Freudian concepts that is to a great extent based on the structural linguistics of F. de Saussure. Certain fundamental ideas of Lacan, such as his views that "the unconscious is structured like a language" and that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other" are examined here, and an attempt is made to place them in perspective in psychoanalysis.