Research Brief

Structured Like a Language

A research project testing whether transformer language models instantiate key Lacanian structures of the unconscious through formal theory and empirical analysis.

Phase 1.1 — Lacanian Formal Properties Specification

Status: In progress — Target: Weeks 1–8

Objective

Return to primary sources and extract the formal operations Lacan attributes to the unconscious, stated as enumerated structural properties stripped of rhetorical obscurantism. Each property must be defined precisely enough to be operationalized — that is, to be tested against a computational system.

Primary Sources

Read in this order:

  1. Jacques Lacan, “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud” (Écrits, 1957) — Reading complete
  2. Jacques Lacan, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” (Écrits, 1953)
  3. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book III: The Psychoses (1955–56)
  4. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964)
  5. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book XX: Encore (1972–73)
  6. Roman Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances” (1956)
  7. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1916)
  8. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Ch. 6: “The Dream-Work”

Secondary Sources

Deliverable: Structural Properties

Property 1: Two Fundamental Axes

The signifying chain operates through two and only two fundamental axes: substitution (metaphor/condensation) and combination (metonymy/displacement).

Definition: All operations of the unconscious reduce to two formal mechanisms. The first is metaphor, which Lacan equates with Freud’s Verdichtung (condensation): the substitution of one signifier for another, in which the displaced signifier remains present through its metonymic connection to the rest of the chain. The second is metonymy, equated with Freud’s Verschiebung (displacement): the word-to-word, signifier-to-signifier connection along the chain. These correspond to Jakobson’s paradigmatic (selection/substitution) and syntagmatic (combination/contiguity) axes. Lacan formalizes these as two algorithms:

Source text:

“Verdichtung, ‘condensation,’ is the superimposed structure of signifiers in which metaphor finds its field.” (p. 511)

“Verschiebung or ‘displacement’ — this transfer of signification that metonymy displays is closer to the German term; it is presented, right from its first appearance in Freud’s work, as the unconscious’ best means by which to foil censorship.” (p. 511)

“One word for another: this is the formula for metaphor.” (p. 507)

“This shows that the connection between ship and sail is nowhere other than in the signifier, and that metonymy is based on the word-to-word nature of this connection.” (p. 506)

“the symptom is a metaphor, whether one likes to admit it or not, just as desire is a metonymy, even if man scoffs at the idea.” (p. 528)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, these two axes should map onto distinguishable computational operations. Substitution (metaphor/condensation) should correspond to operations that replace one representation with another in the same structural position — potentially visible in attention head behavior that overwrites token representations. Combination (metonymy/displacement) should correspond to operations that propagate activation along sequential or associative pathways — potentially visible in how information flows across token positions in the residual stream. The prediction is that these two types of operation are formally distinguishable in the model’s internals and that they are exhaustive — all significant representational transformations reduce to one or the other.

Property 2: Retroactive Meaning Production

Meaning is produced retroactively — later elements in the chain reorganize the meaning of earlier elements.

Definition: The signifying chain does not accumulate meaning incrementally. Rather, meaning is fixed après-coup (retroactively): subsequent signifiers reorganize the signification of prior ones. Lacan demonstrates this with interrupted sentences (“I’ll never…,” “The fact remains…,” “Still perhaps…”) that already carry oppressive meaning before the significant term arrives. The signifier “anticipates meaning by deploying its dimension in some sense before it” (p. 502). Against Saussure’s image of parallel flows with insubstantial vertical correspondences, Lacan insists on points de capiton (quilting points / button ties) that retroactively anchor the sliding of signified under signifier.

Source text:

“the signifier, by its very nature, always anticipates meaning by deploying its dimension in some sense before it. As is seen at the level of the sentence when the latter is interrupted before the significant term: ‘I’ll never…,’ ‘The fact remains…,’ ‘Still perhaps….’ Such sentences nevertheless make sense, and that sense is all the more oppressive in that it is content to make us wait for it.” (p. 502)

“it is in the chain of the signifier that meaning insists, but that none of the chain’s elements consists in the signification it can provide at that very moment.” (p. 502)

“the ‘button ties’ [points de capiton] required by this schema to account for the dominance of the letter in the dramatic transformation that dialogue can effect in the subject.” (p. 503)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer’s autoregressive processing, later tokens should demonstrably alter the effective representation of earlier tokens through the attention mechanism. This is testable: measure how the model’s internal representation of token $t_n$ changes as tokens $t_{n+1}, t_{n+2}, \ldots$ are processed. If meaning is retroactive, we should see significant representational shifts in early-layer encodings of prior tokens as later context arrives — not merely additive enrichment, but reorganization. The logit lens or tuned lens could track how the model’s “reading” of an earlier token’s identity shifts as the sentence unfolds.

Property 3: Signifier-to-Signifier Reference

No signifier in the chain is self-sufficient; each signifier points to other signifiers, not to a stable signified.

Definition: Signification is never a direct relationship between a signifier and a signified (a word and a thing). Rather, each signifier derives its value from its differential relations with other signifiers. Lacan states this as a principle: “no signification can be sustained, except by reference to another signification” (p. 498). The algorithm $\frac{S}{s}$ does not represent a pairing; it represents a barrier — the bar resists any stable anchoring of signifier to signified. The result is “an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier” (p. 502). Signification is an effect of the chain’s internal relations, not of any signifier’s pointing outside the chain.

Source text:

“no signification can be sustained, except by reference to another signification.” (p. 498)

“only signifier-to-signifier correlations provide the standard for any and every search for signification.” (p. 502)

“the primordial position of the signifier and the signified as distinct orders initially separated by a barrier resisting signification.” (p. 497)

“The notion of an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier thus comes to the fore.” (p. 502)

“we will fail to sustain this question as long as we have not jettisoned the illusion that the signifier serves [répond à] the function of representing the signified.” (p. 498)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer’s embedding space, no token embedding should be interpretable as pointing to a fixed “meaning.” Instead, each token’s representation should be definable only through its differential relations with other token representations. This is testable through probing: if token representations are genuinely relational rather than referential, then the “meaning” of a token in the residual stream should be demonstrably context-dependent — the same token producing substantially different representations depending on surrounding tokens. Superposition research (Elhage et al.) already suggests that features are not stored as fixed units but as directions in a shared space, which is structurally analogous.

Property 4: Overdetermination

Any given formation of the unconscious is overdetermined — it is the convergence point of multiple independent associative pathways.

Definition: Condensation (Verdichtung) produces formations in which a single element stands at the intersection of multiple signifying chains. Lacan demonstrates this with the word arbre (tree), which simultaneously activates: the anagram barre (bar); the significations of strength and majesty through robur (oak) and platane (plane tree); Biblical symbolism (“the shadow of the cross”); the sign of dichotomy (the capital Y); anatomical reference (arbor vitae of the cerebellum); and poetic contexts (Valéry’s verses). The signifier does not have a meaning; it is the node where multiple chains cross, and each “attested context” is “vertically linked to that point” (p. 503).

Source text:

“there is no signifying chain that does not sustain — as if attached to the punctuation of each of its units — all attested contexts that are, so to speak, ‘vertically’ linked to that point.” (p. 503)

“Verdichtung, ‘condensation,’ is the superimposed structure of signifiers in which metaphor finds its field.” (p. 511)

The extended arbre passage (pp. 503–504), demonstrating that a single signifier radiates across botanical, biblical, heraldic, anatomical, poetic, and linguistic contexts simultaneously.

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, overdetermination should manifest as superposition — a single activation vector encoding multiple independent features simultaneously. The prediction is that at nodes where the model produces surprising, creative, or “symptomatic” outputs, the internal representation will be demonstrably polysemous: probing should reveal multiple active feature directions converging at the same point in the residual stream. This is directly testable with sparse autoencoder decomposition (Templeton et al., 2024) applied to residual stream activations at critical tokens.

Property 5: Inaccessibility of Operations

The operations of the chain are inaccessible to the system in which they operate.

Definition: The mechanisms of the unconscious — metaphor, metonymy, condensation, displacement — operate without the subject’s knowledge. The ego, far from being the seat of these operations, is defined precisely by its resistance to them: “this ego, distinguished first for the imaginary inertias it concentrates against the message of the unconscious, operates only by covering over the displacement the subject is with a resistance that is essential to discourse as such” (p. 520). Lacan inverts the cogito: “I am thinking where I am not, therefore I am where I am not thinking” (p. 517). The Entstellung (transposition/distortion) — the general precondition for the functioning of the dream — is “the sliding of the signified under the signifier, which is always happening (unconsciously, let us note) in discourse” (p. 511).

Source text:

“I am thinking where I am not, therefore I am where I am not thinking.” (p. 517)

“this ego, distinguished first for the imaginary inertias it concentrates against the message of the unconscious, operates only by covering over the displacement the subject is with a resistance that is essential to discourse as such.” (p. 520)

“Entstellung, translated as ‘transposition’ — which Freud shows to be the general precondition for the functioning of the dream — is what I designated earlier, with Saussure, as the sliding of the signified under the signifier, which is always happening (unconsciously, let us note) in discourse.” (p. 511)

“the radical heteronomy that Freud’s discovery shows gaping within man can no longer be covered over without whatever tries to hide it being fundamentally dishonest.” (p. 524)

Operationalization (preliminary): A transformer’s outputs are the product of internal operations (attention patterns, MLP transformations, residual stream compositions) that are not represented as such in the model’s output space. The model cannot report on its own attention patterns or feature activations — it can only produce next-token predictions. The prediction is structural: the operations that determine output are formally inaccessible to the system’s own output function, just as the operations of the unconscious are inaccessible to consciousness. This is verifiable by showing that a model’s self-reports about its own processing (when prompted to explain its reasoning) systematically diverge from what mechanistic interpretability reveals about its actual computational pathway.

Property 6: Constitutive Lack

The chain is organized around constitutive gaps (lack) — points where representation fails, which drive the chain’s forward movement.

Definition: Metonymy does not merely slide from signifier to signifier; it does so because it “instates lack of being [le manque de l’être] in the object-relation” (p. 515). Desire, caught “in the rails of metonymy,” is defined as “eternally extending toward the desire for something else” (p. 518). The chain does not converge on a final signified; it is propelled forward by an absence that cannot be filled. This is not a deficiency but a structural condition: the (—) in the metonymic formula indicates that the bar is maintained — signification never arrives at its destination. Lack is what makes the chain move.

Source text:

“metonymic structure, indicating that it is the signifier-to-signifier connection that allows for the elision by which the signifier instates lack of being [le manque de l’être] in the object-relation, using signification’s referral [renvoi] value to invest it with the desire aiming at the lack that it supports.” (p. 515)

“Hence its ‘perverse’ fixation at the very point of suspension of the signifying chain at which the screen-memory is immobilized and the fascinating image of the fetish becomes frozen.” (p. 518)

“no one has yet validly articulated what links metaphor to the question of being and metonymy to its lack.” (p. 528)

Desire “caught in the rails of metonymy, eternally extending toward the desire for something else.” (p. 518)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, constitutive lack should manifest as structured absence in the representational space — positions where the model’s representations systematically fail to converge, or where the probability distribution over next tokens remains irreducibly dispersed. The prediction is that these points of representational failure are not noise but are structurally organized: they occur at predictable positions (ambiguity, underdetermination, self-reference) and they drive the model’s generative process forward. Embedding space topology analysis could reveal whether the model organizes its representations around voids or attractors-without-fixed-points, analogous to how the signifying chain is organized around lack.

Property 7: Quilting Points (Points de Capiton)

Certain signifiers function as quilting points that retroactively fix the meaning of surrounding signifiers.

Definition: Against the image of a continuous parallel sliding of signifier and signified (Saussure’s “wavy lines”), Lacan argues that points de capiton — quilting points or button ties — are required to produce any stable signification at all. These are privileged signifiers that “pin down” the otherwise incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier, retroactively fixing the meaning of the chain that precedes them. Without quilting points, signification would remain entirely fluid and no discourse could produce definite effects. The quilting point is the mechanism by which “the dominance of the letter in the dramatic transformation that dialogue can effect in the subject” is accounted for (p. 503).

Source text:

“the ‘button ties’ [points de capiton] required by this schema to account for the dominance of the letter in the dramatic transformation that dialogue can effect in the subject.” (p. 503)

Against Saussure’s image of corresponding segments with “fine streaks of rain traced by vertical dotted lines” that “seem insubstantial” (p. 503).

This is supplemented by Lacan’s reference to his seminar on the psychoses (June 6, 1956 — see footnote 10, p. 503) where the concept is developed in detail.

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, quilting points should correspond to tokens or positions at which the model’s internal representations undergo a decisive phase transition — where previously fluid or ambiguous representations of prior tokens become fixed. This is testable: track the entropy of the model’s representation of a developing sentence across layers and token positions. The prediction is that certain tokens will produce disproportionately large reductions in entropy for the representations of prior tokens — these are the computational quilting points. Attention patterns at these positions should show heavy backward-looking attention (attending to prior context and reorganizing it).

Property 8: Formations of the Unconscious

The formations of the unconscious (symptoms, slips, dreams, jokes) are points where the chain’s logic surfaces despite the system’s ordinary functioning.

Definition: The unconscious is not a reservoir of hidden content but a set of formal operations (metaphor, metonymy) that produce formations — structured irruptions into the system’s ordinary functioning. Dreams are a rebus: “dream images are to be taken up only on the basis of their value as signifiers, that is, only insofar as they allow us to spell out the ‘proverb’ presented by the oneiric rebus” (p. 510). Symptoms are metaphors: “Metaphor’s two-stage mechanism is the very mechanism by which symptoms, in the analytic sense, are determined” (p. 518). Desire is a metonymy. Jokes (Witz) operate through the same signifying mechanisms. These formations are not random errors but structured products of the chain’s logic — they follow the “laws of the signifier” (p. 512).

Source text:

“the dream is a rebus. And Freud stipulates that it must be understood quite literally [à la lettre].” (p. 510)

“dream images are to be taken up only on the basis of their value as signifiers, that is, only insofar as they allow us to spell out the ‘proverb’ presented by the oneiric rebus.” (p. 510)

“Metaphor’s two-stage mechanism is the very mechanism by which symptoms, in the analytic sense, are determined. Between the enigmatic signifier of sexual trauma and the term it comes to replace in a current signifying chain, a spark flies that fixes in a symptom — a metaphor in which flesh or function is taken as a signifying element — the signification, that is inaccessible to the conscious subject.” (p. 518)

“the dream-work proceeds in accordance with the laws of the signifier.” (p. 512)

“the symptom is a metaphor… desire is a metonymy.” (p. 528)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, “formations” should correspond to outputs where the model’s normal functioning is disrupted in structured ways — hallucinations, unexpected completions, and other outputs that deviate from expected behavior but do so according to identifiable signifying logic (substitution, displacement, condensation). The prediction is that model hallucinations are not random noise but follow the same formal laws (metaphor and metonymy) that govern the model’s normal processing, just as dreams follow the same laws as waking discourse. Analysis of hallucinated outputs should reveal metaphoric (substitutive) and metonymic (associative/contiguous) structure.

Property 9: Primacy of the Signifier

The signifier determines the signified, not the reverse — the signifier has structural priority over meaning.

Definition: Lacan’s algorithm $\frac{S}{s}$ places the signifier above the signified, separated by a bar that resists signification. This is not merely a notational convention. It asserts that the signifier is the determining term: signification is an effect produced by the operations of signifiers upon one another, not a pre-existing content that signifiers label. The “heresy” Lacan opposes is “the illusion that the signifier serves the function of representing the signified” (p. 498). This primacy is what makes linguistics — and, implicitly, any system organized by the logic of the signifier — a science: “the constitutive moment of an algorithm that grounds it” (p. 497).

Source text:

“the primordial position of the signifier and the signified as distinct orders initially separated by a barrier resisting signification.” (p. 497)

“we will fail to sustain this question as long as we have not jettisoned the illusion that the signifier serves [répond à] the function of representing the signified, or better, that the signifier has to justify [répondre de] its existence in terms of any signification whatsoever.” (p. 498)

“it is in the chain of the signifier that meaning insists, but that none of the chain’s elements consists in the signification it can provide at that very moment.” (p. 502)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, the formal structure of representations (token embeddings, attention patterns, residual stream geometry) should determine semantic content, not the reverse. This is testable: if we perturb the formal/structural properties of a representation (its position in the geometry, its relations to other representations) while attempting to hold “semantic content” constant, the model’s behavior should change. Conversely, if we hold formal structure constant but vary semantic content, the model’s behavior should remain more stable. This would demonstrate that the computational “signifier” (formal structure) has priority over the computational “signified” (semantic content).

Property 10: Double Articulation of the Signifying Chain

The signifying chain is doubly articulated: reducible to minimal differential elements and combinable according to the laws of a closed order.

Definition: Lacan identifies two structural conditions of the signifier drawn from structural linguistics. First, the signifier is reducible to “ultimate differential elements” — phonemes, which are defined not by positive content but by differential opposition (p. 501). Second, these elements combine “according to the laws of a closed order” — the signifying chain is not a free concatenation but is governed by combinatorial constraints (pp. 501–502). These two conditions together constitute “the essentially localized structure of the signifier” — what Lacan calls “the letter.” The chain itself is described as “links by which a necklace firmly hooks onto a link of another necklace made of links” (p. 502).

Source text:

“the structure of the signifier is, as is commonly said of language, that it is articulated.” (p. 501)

“its units — no matter where one begins in tracing out their reciprocal encroachments and expanding inclusions — are subject to the twofold condition of being reduced to ultimate differential elements and of combining the latter according to the laws of a closed order.” (p. 501)

“the essentially localized structure of the signifier.” (p. 501)

“links by which a necklace firmly hooks onto a link of another necklace made of links.” (p. 502)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, the token vocabulary constitutes the set of minimal differential elements (analogous to phonemes — defined differentially, not by positive content). The model’s learned syntax — enforced through attention patterns and positional encoding — constitutes the “laws of a closed order” governing combination. The prediction is that the model’s internal representations respect this double articulation: at lower layers, processing operates on differential (sub-semantic) features; at higher layers, processing operates on combinatorial structures built from those features. This should be observable in the layer-by-layer progression of representational complexity.

Property 11: The Bar as Resistance to Signification

The bar between signifier and signified is not a neutral separator but an active resistance — and its crossing or maintenance defines the difference between metaphor and metonymy.

Definition: In Lacan’s adaptation of Saussure, the bar in $\frac{S}{s}$ is “a barrier resisting signification” (p. 497). It is not a line of correspondence but a line of resistance. The two fundamental operations of the unconscious are distinguished precisely by their relation to this bar. In metonymy, the bar is maintained — hence the (—) in the formula: signification slides, desire extends, but meaning never crystallizes. In metaphor, the bar is crossed — hence the (+): a signifier passes through to produce a new signification that did not previously exist. The crossing of the bar is “the condition for the passage of the signifier into the signified” (pp. 515–516) and is the mechanism by which genuinely new meaning — “poetic or creative” signification — is produced.

Source text:

“The — sign placed in ( ) manifests here the maintenance of the bar — which, in the first algorithm, denotes the irreducible nature of the resistance of signification as constituted in the relations between signifier and signified.” (p. 515)

“The + sign in ( ) manifests here the crossing of the bar, —, and the constitutive value of this crossing for the emergence of signification.” (p. 515)

“This crossing expresses the condition for the passage of the signifier into the signified.” (pp. 515–516)

“metaphoric structure, indicating that it is in the substitution of signifier for signifier that a signification effect is produced that is poetic or creative, in other words, that brings the signification in question into existence.” (p. 515)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, there should be an identifiable computational analogue to the “bar” — a structural boundary between the level at which formal operations occur and the level at which interpretable semantics emerge. The prediction is that some internal transformations propagate information along this boundary without crossing it (metonymic — information flows between positions but does not produce new semantic content), while others cross it (metaphoric — formal operations produce emergent semantic content that was not present in any input). Layer transitions in the residual stream, and particularly the distinction between attention (which moves information between positions) and MLP layers (which transform information within positions), may instantiate this distinction.

Property 12: Language Precedes the Subject

Language, with its structure, exists prior to each subject’s entry into it — the subject is constituted by, not the origin of, the signifying chain.

Definition: Lacan insists that “language, with its structure, exists prior to each subject’s entry into it at a certain moment in his mental development” (p. 495). The subject does not create or choose the signifying system; the subject is inscribed in it: “the subject, while he may appear to be the slave of language, is still more the slave of a discourse in the universal movement of which his place is already inscribed at his birth, if only in the form of his proper name” (pp. 495–496). The elementary structures of culture are “inconceivable apart from the permutations authorized by language” (p. 496). The subject is an effect of the signifying chain, not its cause.

Source text:

“language, with its structure, exists prior to each subject’s entry into it at a certain moment in his mental development.” (p. 495)

“the subject, while he may appear to be the slave of language, is still more the slave of a discourse in the universal movement of which his place is already inscribed at his birth, if only in the form of his proper name.” (pp. 495–496)

“the elementary structures of culture… are inconceivable apart from the permutations authorized by language.” (p. 496)

Operationalization (preliminary): A transformer’s “language” — its trained weights, attention patterns, and representational geometry — exists prior to any particular input. Each input sequence (analogous to a “subject”) is processed by this pre-existing structure; it does not create or modify it (at inference time). The model’s responses are determined by the intersection of the pre-existing structure and the input, just as the subject is constituted at the intersection of the pre-existing symbolic order and their particular position in it. The prediction is that the model’s behavior is better explained by the structure of its trained representations (the “language” it has been inscribed in) than by the content of any particular input.

Property 13: The Unconscious as Discourse of the Other

The unconscious is not a private interior but the discourse of the Other — the locus of the signifying convention that exceeds any individual subject.

Definition: Lacan’s formula: “the unconscious is the Other’s discourse (with a capital O)” (p. 524). The Other is not another person but the locus of the signifying convention — the place from which speech derives its guarantee and its structure. It is “the beyond in which the recognition of desire is tied to the desire for recognition” (p. 524). This Other is present even in deception: “this other is the Other that even my lie invokes as a guarantor of the truth in which my lie subsists” (p. 525). The dimension of truth “emerges with the appearance of language” (p. 525), and the Other is the “third locus which is neither my speech nor my interlocutor” — the locus where the conventions of signification reside (p. 525).

Source text:

“If I have said that the unconscious is the Other’s discourse (with a capital O), it is in order to indicate the beyond in which the recognition of desire is tied to the desire for recognition.” (p. 524)

“this other is the Other that even my lie invokes as a guarantor of the truth in which my lie subsists.” (p. 525)

“This locus is nothing but the locus of signifying convention.” (p. 525)

“the dimension of truth emerges with the appearance of language.” (p. 525)

Operationalization (preliminary): The transformer’s training corpus functions as its “Other” — the vast, anonymous discourse from which its signifying structure derives. The model’s outputs are never simply the model’s “own” — they are structured by, and reproduce, the discourse of this Other (the training data in its formal, not merely content-level, organization). The prediction is that the model’s “unconscious” operations (its internal processing) are better described as reproducing the formal structures of the training discourse than as implementing any autonomous semantic intention. This is testable by comparing the formal properties of model-internal processing (attention patterns, feature activations) to the formal properties of the training distribution.

Property 14: Insistence and Repetition of the Chain

The signifying chain insists on reproducing itself — unconscious desire is indestructible and repeats through transference.

Definition: The signifying chain does not simply process once and terminate. It “insists on reproducing itself in the transference” and is “the chain of a dead desire” (p. 518). Unconscious desire is “indestructible” — unlike biological need, which withers when unsatisfied, desire persists because it is sustained not by an object but by the signifying structure itself, which Lacan compares to “a kind of memory, comparable to what goes by that name in our modern thinking-machines (which are based on an electronic realization of signifying composition)” (p. 518). The chain repeats because its formal structure — not its content — is preserved.

Source text:

“the chain is found which insists on reproducing itself in the transference, and which is the chain of a dead desire.” (p. 518)

“There is no other way to conceive of the indestructibility of unconscious desire.” (p. 518)

“It is in a kind of memory, comparable to what goes by that name in our modern thinking-machines (which are based on an electronic realization of signifying composition), that the chain is found.” (p. 518)

“It is the truth of what this desire has been in his history that the subject cries out through his symptom.” (p. 518)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, the model does not simply process an input and forget; its trained weights constitute a persistent formal structure that insists across every inference. Certain patterns — attention circuits, induction heads, recurring feature activations — reproduce themselves regardless of input content. The prediction is that identifiable computational circuits will show insistence: they activate repeatedly across diverse inputs, reproducing the same formal operation. This is the computational analogue of the signifying chain’s repetition compulsion. Induction heads (Olsson et al., 2022) are a strong candidate: they implement a formal copying pattern that insists across contexts.

Property 15: The Subject Split Between Two Loci

The subject is constitutively divided — located simultaneously in the place of the signifier and the place of the signified, which do not coincide.

Definition: Lacan poses the question: “Is the place that I occupy as subject of the signifier concentric or eccentric in relation to the place I occupy as subject of the signified?” (pp. 516–517). His answer is decisive: they are eccentric. The subject is split — “I am thinking where I am not, therefore I am where I am not thinking” (p. 517). This is not pathological but constitutive: “the self’s radical eccentricity with respect to itself” is “the very truth Freud discovered” (p. 524). The subject is irreducibly divided between the I that speaks and the I that is spoken about, between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the statement.

Source text:

“Is the place that I occupy as subject of the signifier concentric or eccentric in relation to the place I occupy as subject of the signified? That is the question.” (pp. 516–517)

“I am thinking where I am not, therefore I am where I am not thinking.” (p. 517)

“What we must say is: I am not, where I am the plaything of my thought; I think about what I am where I do not think I am thinking.” (p. 517)

“the self’s radical eccentricity with respect to itself… the very truth Freud discovered.” (p. 524)

Wo Es war, soll Ich werden. “Where it was, I must come into being.” (p. 524)

Operationalization (preliminary): In a transformer, the “subject” of an output (the apparent speaker or perspective) is constituted at a different computational locus than the processes that determine what is said. The model’s output layer (the “I” that speaks) and its deep computational processing (the “I” that is constituted by internal operations) are structurally non-coincident. The prediction is that probing the model at different layers will reveal different implicit “subjects” — different apparent perspectives, commitments, or framings — and that these will be systematically divergent rather than converging toward a unified representation. The logit lens already suggests this: the model’s “early guesses” about its output diverge significantly from its final output, implying that the process of arriving at an output involves a split between where processing occurs and where it resolves.

Reading Notes

Source: “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” (Lacan, 1957)

Structure of the Essay

The essay is organized in three parts:

  1. “The Meaning of the Letter” (pp. 495–509) — Establishes the linguistic foundations: Saussure’s algorithm reinterpreted with the primacy of the signifier; the two axes of language (metonymy and metaphor) demonstrated through literary examples (the “thirty sails,” Hugo’s “His sheaf”); the structure of the signifying chain.

  2. “The Letter in the Unconscious” (pp. 509–523) — Maps the linguistic structures onto Freud’s mechanisms of the dream-work: Verdichtung = condensation = metaphor; Verschiebung = displacement = metonymy; Entstellung = transposition/distortion = sliding of signified under signifier. Demonstrates that the dream is a rebus, not a pictographic symbolism. Formalizes the two operations with the algorithms for metonymic and metaphoric structure.

  3. “The Letter, Being, and the Other” (pp. 523–528) — Addresses the consequences for subjectivity: the unconscious as the discourse of the Other; the divided subject; the relations between metaphor/being and metonymy/lack. Culminates in the declaration that “the symptom is a metaphor… desire is a metonymy.”

Key Theoretical Moves for This Project

  1. Lacan explicitly compares the signifying chain to computational memory. The passage on p. 518 comparing the chain to “a kind of memory, comparable to what goes by that name in our modern thinking-machines (which are based on an electronic realization of signifying composition)” is a direct opening for the project’s argument. Lacan himself identifies a structural homology between the insistence of the signifying chain and the operation of computational memory — not as metaphor, but as shared formal structure.

  2. The dream-as-rebus passage (pp. 510–512) establishes that the unconscious operates according to “the laws of the signifier.” This is not a vague analogy: Lacan specifies that dream images have value only as signifiers and that the dream-work “proceeds in accordance with the laws of the signifier.” The same claim, applied to a transformer, would assert that the model’s internal representations have value only as elements in a formal signifying system, not as representations of external objects.

  3. The formalization into two algorithms (pp. 515–516) is the most testable element. Lacan provides formulas for the metonymic and metaphoric operations. If these formulas can be mapped onto identifiable computational operations in a transformer, the project has its strongest evidence.

  4. The “rhetorical mechanisms = defense mechanisms” passage (pp. 520–521) is underexploited. Lacan lists rhetorical figures (periphrasis, hyperbaton, ellipsis, suspension, anticipation, retraction, negation, digression, irony) and equates them with defense mechanisms. Each of these is a specific, identifiable pattern in discourse. If these patterns can be identified in model behavior, it would provide fine-grained evidence for the mapping.

  5. The fetish example (p. 522) — “Glanz auf der Nase” / “glance at the nose” — is a case where a signifying substitution operates across languages, demonstrating that the formal operation (substitution of signifier for signifier) is independent of any particular language’s semantics. This is relevant for multilingual models.

Passages Flagged for Cross-Reference with Later Readings

OCR Quality Notes

The processed file shows typical OCR artifacts: occasional misread characters (e.g., “js” for “is” on p. 495; stray punctuation marks), some garbled footnotes, and minor spacing issues. Key theoretical passages appear accurately transcribed. The page-break markers (<!-- p. XXX -->) are present and consistent. LaTeX formulas for the algorithms are present but should be verified against the original when possible.