28

— The author starts his paper by considering the relation between language and the unconscious theorised by J. Lacan in 1953. There follows an analysis of the place of language in psychoanalytical discourse with reference to a clinical example. The author then evokes the threat posed by current scientific ambitions, in reference to new disciplines and the current vogue for a new form of synthesis. He puts forward the hypothesis that psychoanalytical discourse more or less points to an absence. The emergence of languages, which in contrast to language constitute a veritable object of knowledge, can ultimately only be conceived of in the context of the wider evolution of semiotics. The author also, in passing, considers L. Danon-Boileau’s interpretation of the two following concepts: the heterogeneity of the signifier and the internal discharge of affects.