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The [[formation]]s of the [[unconscious]] are those circumstances in which the [[law]]s of the [[unconscious]] are most discernible: the [[joke]], the [[dream]], the [[symptom]], the [[lapsus]] ([[parapraxis]]). [[Freud]] referred to the fundamental mechanisms involved in the [[formation]]s of the [[unconscious]] as [[condensation]] and [[displacement]], which [[Lacan]] redefines as [[metaphor]] and [[metonymy]]. With the former, the play of [[signifier]]s creates sense in nonsense in relation to [[truth]]. The latter reveals the [[lack]] of a [[word]], "an item of waste sent like a ball between [[code]] and [[message]]." In this [[lack]] [[substitute]] [[word]]s appear and function like "the [[metonymic]] ruins of the [[object]]."
At the junction between [[psychoanalysis]] and [[linguistics]], [[Lacan]] wants to [[formalize]] the primordial [[law]]s of the [[unconscious]] that [[Freud]] had uncovered. His project is to define a [[topology]] of the levels of functioning of the signifier in the subject by elaborating the [[graph]]s that, under the generic name of [[Graph of Desire]], will be at the core of "[[The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious]]" written in 1960 and published in 1966 in <i>[[Écrits]]</i>. Here the key concept is that of [[desire]], and [[Lacan]]'s [[dialectic]] of [[desire]] is quite distinct from [[Hegel]]'s. The Graph of Desire will serve as a [[topology]] of the different steps constitutive of the [[subject]]. "It is precisely because desire is articulated that it is not articulable" in a [[signifying chain]]. [[Slavoj Zizek]] commenting on this formulation argues that [[subject]] is not substance, "it has not substantial positive being in itself, being caught between 'not yet' and 'no longer'. The [[subject]] never is, it will have been - either it is not yet here or it is no longer here, since there is only a trace of its absence."
