Gérard Pommier – How Can One Speak of a Subject of the Unconscious
 
THE LETTER 24 (Spring 2002) pages 75-82
 
Everyone has his own Lacan! I mean that each one has found in the work of Lacan an invention that has opened new horizons on psychoanalysis. Lacan, himself, considered that his main discovery was the ]matheme] of drive: I mean the object little a. For myself, I’ve never been really convinced of the originality of the object a, because Freud had already considerably explained this by the notion of drive. Freud is even clearer than Lacan, especially in distinguishing between the ‘aim’ and the ‘object’ of drive. Some Lacanians mix up the aim and the object, which can lead to some quite embarrassing results. The ‘aim’ of the drive is the phallic signification, the (Vorstellungs Representanz) while the object is only the ‘representative’ of this signification, an interchangeable representative of which each avatar becomes important only in function of the inaccessible aim.