The knowledge that there is a part of the psychic functions that are out of conscious reach, we did not need to wait for Freud to know this!

Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.

The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible.

...Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack.

The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.

The sufferings of neurosis and psychosis are for us a schooling in the passions of the soul, just as the beam of the psychoanalytic scales, when we calculate the tilt of its threat to entire communities, provides us with an indication of the deadening of the passions in society.

For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence.