The Unconscious is Structured as a Language: Evidence from the Lab in Support of Clinical Practice

Starting from Freud's model of primary and secondary processes and from Lacan's concept of the signifier, we propose a series of measures for these mental processes, which can be mobilized independently of psychoanalytic training. The GeoCat 1.3 is a non-linguistic tool based on forced similarity choices between geometric figures, with good psychometric characteristics for the assessment of primary and secondary processes. Based on this model we devised a linguistic version of this type of forced similarity choices, the WordLists. In these lists, the phonological and the semantic alternatives behave as primary, respectively secondary process parameters. However, the unrelated alternatives in the control lists turn out to be measures of their own right. In particular, the unrelated choices, in competition with phonological choices, behave as a measure of defensiveness. A study of subliminally administered WordLists has shown that defensive participants unconsciously shy away from phonological ambiguity; faced with ambiguity their subliminal N320 phonological mismatch negativity was exacerbated, possible indicating perplexity. Primary and secondary process parameters also turned out to explain up to one third of the variance in the production of laboratory induces parapraxes. Finally, we have also shown that people solve rebuses unwittingly. This empirical research demonstrates that it is possible to test psychoanalytic ideas in a falsifiable way, and the results give empirical grounding to these principles, when called upon in the clinical setting. Especially the signifier is an important clinical tool which may reveal etiological strands unsuspected to the patient, as shown in the clinical excerpt.