The subject’s universe will really change only at the moment when she attains the knowledge that the Other knows (that it does not exist).
In psychoanalysis (if it is worthy of its name) the main problem also does not lie simply in the subject becoming conscious of her unconscious, of all that (often painfully) determines her actions and experiences.
This is insufficient: the main problem is precisely how to shift and change the very symbolic and imaginary structures in which this unconscious is embodied outside herself, in the manner and rituals of her conduct, speech, relations to others — in certain situations that keep “happening” to her.
In short, it is not simply that in analysis the subject has to shift her position (or even adapt herself ); the major part of the analytic work consists precisely in shifting the external practices, in moving all those “chickens” in which the subject’s unconscious (and her relation to herself ) are externalized.
And one of the major obstacles that can occur in analysis is precisely that the subject can become all too eager to change herself and her perception of the world, convinced that in analysis she will experience a kind of intimate revelation as a result of which everything will be different and easier when she reenters the world.
In other words, the subject is ready to do quite a lot, change radically, if only she can remain unchanged in the Other (in the Symbolic as the external world in which, to put it in Hegel’s terms, the subject’s consciousness of herself is embodied, materialized as something that still does not know itself as consciousness).
In this case, belief in the Other (in the modern form of believing that the Other does not know) is precisely what helps to maintain the same state of things, regardless of all subjective mutations and permutations.
The subject’s universe will really change only at the moment when she attains the knowledge that the Other knows (that it does not exist). (16-17 Odd One In)