limitedly self-conscious—that is to say, the unconsciousqua specific locus of the
repressed is only a subset of the un-consciousqua general psychic activity.
Lacan is proposing nothing less than the un-consciously intentional nature
of the Freudian perception-consciousness system tout court.For this same reason,
he thinks it is impossible to reduce consciousness (that is, un-conscious “lived
experience”) to the opaque nature of the ego as an object. What about self-
consciousness? Does it have to be equated with the ego? At this stage it should
be clear that, according to Lacan, there is no self-consciousness if by “self-
consciousness” we mean a kind of consciousness that is fully present to itself. We
could say that the ego is identical to self-consciousness only if we specify that this
“self ” is achieved exclusively through an alienating identification with the other.
Lacan’s often apparently contradictory statements with regard to this topic must
therefore always be referred to the following conclusion: either there is no self-
consciousness at all (as fully present to itself ), or “self ”-consciousness corre-
sponds to the alienatedego. On these same grounds, Lacan is also able to speak of
consciousness in terms of a “polar tension between an ego[‘self’-consciousness]
alienated from the subject and a perception which fundamentally escapes it, a pure
percipi”:^58 in other words, consciousnessqua un-conscious perception continues its
activity even after the initial formation of the ego (this is in fact how the ego-ideal
can be introjected). We could suggest that the unconscious stricto sensu,the uncon-
scious to be understood as the locus of what is expelled from self-consciousness,
is precisely the product of such a “polar tension” between the ego and the un-
conscious as “pure percipi.”
As I have just proposed, imagosas (exceptional) images cannot obviously exist
independently from the subject, and must therefore initially be represented by
him. We should now more specifically explain just how this occurs despitetheir
(de)formative power. One could say that, according to Lacan, they are more con-
stitutive than constituted: in other words, if he does not deny that they are con-
stituted by the subject, the fact remains that they are substantially different from
normal images (which is why psychoanalytic theory uses the Latin term to desig-
nate them). Only very few particular images correspond to unconscious represen-
tations that have a (de)formative power over the subject’s psychic development.
But from where does such a (de)formative power derive? It is obtained from com-
plexes to be understood as fundamental, unconscious structures of interpersonal
relationships: this is how Lacan understands the rational nature of the unconscious
in his early work.^59 The subject finds his place in this pregiven symbolic structure
through the action of imagosas unconscious representations. Freud tended to con-
sider complexes as (phylo)genetically transmitted from generation to generation,
that is, as innate; Lacan refuses to relegate the efficacy of imagosto the sphere of
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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