Unconscious is Structured like a Language

The phenomena of hypnosis

Hypnosis is a peculiar phenomenon that allows a practitioner to have some kind of dialogue with the unconscious realm of the human mind. What is curious however, is how the unconscious that is accessed though hypnosis, is responsive to language.

If a hypnotist induces the victim to eat a lemon by describing it as a juicy, sweet apple, the victim does not presumably hallucinate the visual image, as they will hold the lemon according to its proper shape. The victim will however, interpret the lemon as an apple and in spite of their taste buds, actually enjoy the apple! This means that interpretation is no longer based on sense perception, it has been short-circuited and the word ‘apple’ now dominates the senses. We form our sense through language.

Signifiers without signified

The implications of this phenomenon are quite profound. A hypnotist can bring about long or short term modifcations to the structure of the Unconscious, sometimes a therapist may provide post-hypnotic suggestions that provoke nausea when the patient encounters a cigarette, the words ‘take over’ the senses whenever temptation for cigarettes come about. Similar effects are seen in neurotic patients, a myth speaks to the subject. The myth is essentially the ‘discourse of the other’. The Unconscious works like a language of signifiers without signifieds, marks on a page without meanings behind them.

This means that language is a part of the Unconscious, the subject (I) is created from otherness. The Unconscious can be seen like a grid of signs that are nothing more than marks on the grid without meaning, no signified relation to the outside of the subject. I is a creation of language, which is the other.

In the hypnotic state, verbalisation is disassociated from realisation.

The stage hypnotist may inflict upon their victim the curse of barking like a dog whenever someone claps, or says a keyword (trigger phrase) through post-hypnotic suggestion and much like a neurotic patient when behaving in an odd way, will rationalise and justify their actions as normal and under their own control.

The Unconscious is structured like a language

This famous and profound phrase is from the psycho-analyst Jacques Lacan, through the phenomenon of hypnosis he discovered that the Unconscious was not primordial and primitive, full of animal instincts that were completely irrational and without structure. It is composed of drives and what it knows about the elementary is no more than the elements of the signifier.

We become ourselves through the other, in a previous thread on the concept of Incorporation (the embodiment of the world around us) I discussed how we are nothing more than what we ingest around us,from those closest to us. The Unconscious as a language shows how we desire what others desire, it’s just how we are wired.

Need can be satisfied, but desire is never satisfied. In understanding how language and symbols can shape our inner world, we can simply find ‘others’ to inform ourselves that can best suit our needs. Understanding this structure of language as something instrinsic to the way our psyche operates should not be taken as a kind of inauthenticity, but rather a determinism that we can be aware of and then expose our Unconscious to different desires.