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Article: Subject
- Article from:
- International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
- Author:
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SUBJECT
Unable to separate the term
subject
from the notion of consciousness, Freud placed it in opposition to the external world or the object, or in their reciprocal reversal (1915e). In "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis" (1933a [1932]) Freud said the ego was "in its proper sense a subject" (p. 58)
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not as an essence, but a function to be filled.
Jacques Lacan (1966) changed this by referring to the subject as "the subject of the unconscious" in its "unwitting" dimension, its ex-centricity in relation to itself. The subject is the "it" that the "I" speaks of when the I wishes to refer to itself as unconscious. Or rather, the subject is this very split between the "I" ...