From Saussure to Lacan and vice versa

a barrier resistant to meaning in the field of speech and language

Abstract

The influence of Saussurian theory on Jacques Lacan's handwriting and its consequences for psychoanalysis is still the subject of much debate among psychoanalysts as well as linguists. The present research aims to reintroduce such a discussion in the light of Ferdinand de Saussure's manuscripts known as De la double essence du langage which became public only in 1996 and consequently ignored by Jacques Lacan. For this, we start from the following question: in such Saussure manuscripts, what are the theoretical elements - distinct from those of the Cours de linguistique générale - that may justify a reintroduction of the dialogue between his semiology and the Lacanian theory of the signifier as regards conception? “resistance-resistant barrier”? In order to answer it, we seek to lead an interpretative thread from three interdependent coordinates: (1) Freud's conception of resistance and its relation to the concept of repression; (2) Lacan's reading of Freud's resistance from advances from Saussure's sign theory; (3) the idea of ​​meaning as an effect of the relationship between signifiers present in the sign model found in Saussurian manuscripts and its importance to the conception of structure. In this study, we developed a research in theoretical psychoanalysis that is basically guided by the letters Freudian, Lacanian and Saussurian. We focus our thesis on the issue of resistance to meaning revealed by Lacan in his interpretation of the sign proposed by Saussure. This study led us to the understanding that the idea of ​​resistance to meaning is a key reading of the linguistic sign model described in the manuscript, since it is a negative, ephemeral component that only exists in relation to other signs in a system in constant motion. With this, we find in Lacan's idea of ​​“resistance-resistant barrier” a reading key to the notion of meaning as shown in De la double essence du langage.