The Thing’s Order

Abstract

This chapter is an explication of the fifth section (“The Thing’s Order”) of “The Freudian Thing.” Its title refers to Lacan’s account of the symbolic order (an order into which human beings are drawn by the mirror stage). Saussure’s structuralist rendition of uniquely-human natural languages is avowedly foundational for Lacan. He employs the Saussurian tripartite distinction between “sign,” “signifier,” and “signified” to recast psychoanalytic symptoms as signifiers rather than the symptoms-as-signs of somatic medicine. Additionally, Lacan connects Hegel with Saussure, using this connection to argue against the Anglo–Saxon individualism coloring ego psychology. He also reflects upon the lamentable theoretical and technical consequences of the misinterpretations of Freud crystallized in English and French mistranslations of Freud’s “Wo Es war, soll Ich werden.”