( 1 ) Lacan begins from a very clear-cut empirical observation. First of all, the sub-
ject is alienated in language because he never manages to say exactly what he really
wants to say. His interlocutor is unable to grasp fully what the subject actually
means to tell him: words do not suffice to convey the subject’s desire appropri-
ately, and consequently fully to satisfy it. At the same time, the subject’s individual
speech—his perpetually addressing a counterpart in discourse^10 —also always says
morethan the subject wants to say. The counterpart can read in the subject’s words
something that he did not intend to tell him. (Furthermore, the counterpart is usu-
ally unaware of his interpreting beyond the subject’s conscious intention.)^11 Lacan
believes it is precisely the thematization of such a surplus of speech with respect to
conscious intention that led Freud to discover the efficaciousness of the “talking
cure,” psychoanalytic treatment. Before Freud, Lacan argues, “intention was con-
fused with the dimension of consciousness, since it seemed that consciousness was
inherent to what the subject had to sayqua signification [signification].”^12 In simple
terms: before Freud, it was assumed that the subject could consciously say what he
wanted to say. The mistaken equation between intentionality and consciousness
(the fact that the unconscious was overlooked) relied precisely on the unques-
tioned equation between consciousness and signification. On the basis of Freud’s
confutation of both these equations, Lacan deduces the existence of a (universal)
“wall of language” that prevents each subject from fully speaking with the Other.
For the time being, the phrase “speaking with the Other” should be understood
both as the subject’s unconscious full speechabout his true desire, and as the subject’s
speaking to the Other unconscious subject. I shall later attempt to elucidate how,
from the standpoint of the unconscious, this is a spurious distinction.
( 2 ) From the same empirical recognition of the misunderstandings caused by lan-
guage in speech, Lacan comes to the conclusion that linguistics is correct in dis-
tinguishing a subject of the statement(roughly attributable to language) from a
subject of the enunciation(roughly attributable to full speech). To put it bluntly, the
“I” which functions as the grammatical subject of a given statement may not be
identified with the “I” which carries out this actof speech. The former is nothing
but the linguistic correspondent of the ego. The alienating “wall of language”
overlaps with imaginary alienation: it is nothing but the latter’s transposition into
words. That is, the subject of the statement corresponds to the objectified pendent
of the ego in the realm of language. More precisely, as Fink has lucidly observed,
“the personal pronoun ‘I’ designates the person who identifies his or herself with
a specific ideal image. Thus the ego is what is represented by the subject of the
statement.”^13 Lacan defines the speech of such an I as empty speech: consequently,
empty speech is nothing but speech alienated in language, subjugated to its imag-the unconscious structured like a language