The Economies of the Subject serve both Repression and the Signifier.

Mindful of the theme for this Congress "The Subject of the Unconscious and Language’’，I wish to confine this communication to a clinical demonstration - yes, in the way physicians demonstrate clinical signs - a demonstration of the action of the signifier on the subject. The signifier, as we know, is any inert element of language which unconscious meaning borrows to communicate itself. When a neurologist, let's say, wants to demonstrate a palsy or a paralysis of the seventh cranial nerve, which journeys from the base of the brain through the skull to serve the muscles of the face, he asks the patient to smile and there will be a drooping of the mouth on the side of the paralysed nerve, confirming the palsy.…