Verhaeghe, P. (1998). Causation and Destitution of a Pre-ontological Non-entity: On the Lacanian Subject. In D. Nobus (Ed.), Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. (pp. 164-189). New York: State University of New York Press.
Lacan not only distances himself from this substantiated interpretation of the unconscious, he even subverts it: the unconscious is of the order of the … the ‘non-realised,’ the ‘unborn,’ ‘limbo’ (les limbes). As a process , it is always situated at the border; in itself, it is a void, an abyss … This abyss is pre-ontological: not of the order of to be or not to be, but of the order of the not-realised.
And if this unconscious becomes realised, it always happens in a bungled, failed way.
There is cause only in something that doesn’t work.
Hence, we find ourselves again dealing with two levels . On the one hand, there is the chain of signifiers with the lack between them (Freud : the repressed) . This is the level of the automaton, of the law and predictability, and thus of science. Underlying this chain, we find a more fundamental lack, concerning the real beyond any signifier (Freud : the primal repressed) . This is the level of the tuche, of cause and unpredictability.
The interaction between the two levels consists in the never ending attempt of the chain of signifiers to produce an answer to the real. This attempt fails and results in the exact opposite: the more signifiers produced, the further one moves away from this real. Therefore, in Seminar XX, Lacan defines the real as ‘what does not stop not writing itself.
What is this real all about? Lacan is quite clear on this point. The real beyond the signifier, functioning as cause, is drive-ridden, and that is why Lacan took the drive as his starting-point.
With this aspect of the real, the meeting is always a failed one, because it contains no signifier. In the course of his teaching, Lacan enumerated the various manifestations of the real: the Other of the Other, the sexual relationship, Woman (La femme), all of them summarized in the notation of the barred Other 