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Updated: Jan 12, 2026

Perspectives on Neuroscience
Published on: July 31, 2007
What Sort Of Language Is The Unconscious Structured Like? A Lacanian Neuropsychoanalytic Perspective
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Lacan's return to Freud gravitates around his aphorism that the unconscious is structured like a language. This is often cause for criticism from non-Lacanian analysts. However, this aphorism has multiple meanings beyond the unconscious consisting of word-forms. This paper sketches relational, affective, neuropsychological, and Freudian criticisms of this linguistic unconscious. I will then highlight that the key signifier is "like": to be structured "like" a language is to be structured according to differential representatives. I conclude with a Lacanian neuropsychoanalytic functional model of differential representatives that need not be words.
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