The electricity of being

The unconscious is not a repository of repressed contents nor a dark space where we store what we don't want to see. It is an active force that structures our experience, operating constantly in every act, every word, every dream. Like electricity running through a house's circuits, the unconscious is invisible but determines what can be turned on, what can function, what can manifest in our psychic life.

It is this invisible force that divides us as subjects: between who we think we are and what manifests despite ourselves, between what we want to say and what escapes us in every slip, between our conscious intentions and the real effects of our acts. This is not a flaw to be corrected but our most intimate condition: we are subjects precisely because we are divided by this current that runs through us and exceeds us.

The subject is divided between conscious and unconscious domains shaped by the signifier, the law, language, and culture.

Like electricity, the unconscious doesn't need to be "discovered" to operate - it's already functioning at every moment, producing effects, generating short circuits, illuminating unexpected areas of our experience. Analysis doesn't seek to "find" the unconscious, but to learn to read its manifestations that are already there, visible to those who know how to look.

The no that saves

The paternal function has nothing to do with the biological father or traditional paternity stereotypes. It's a fundamental psychic operation: the introduction of the 'no' that makes life in society possible. Like a traffic light that frustrates but saves us from chaos, the father is that function that introduces the necessary limit, that cut that tears us away from the mortifying jouissance of imaginary completeness.

Contemporary nostalgia for a "strong" paternal authority reveals precisely the confusion between the real father and the paternal function. We don't need more authoritarian fathers: we need the function of the limit to operate, the one that allows us to desire precisely because not everything is possible. The paternal 'no' isn't a capricious prohibition but the very condition of our freedom.

The paradox is that we can only build something of our own from this fundamental frustration. The paternal law, by prohibiting certain immediate satisfactions, opens the space for desire and creativity. Without this structuring 'no', we would remain trapped in a limitless jouissance (enjoyment) that, in its very excess, would annihilate us.

The mirage of desire

The market wants us to believe we desire objects, when in reality what we seek is the gaze of the other. We don't buy things: we buy the way we imagine others will see us when we possess them. The latest iPhone isn't a phone: it's the promise of belonging to that place where others desire us. The trap is perfect because we confuse the object with what we truly seek: the desire of the other.

This is the paradox that capitalism masterfully exploits: it sells us objects pretending they are what we desire, when in reality what we want is for others to desire our desire. The market functions as an infinite mirror where desires reflect and confuse themselves, where each new product promises to be the key for others to look at us as we want to be seen.

Desire is never direct or simple: it's always triangulated by the other's gaze. We desire what others desire, and we desire it precisely because others desire it. This is the uncomfortable truth that marketing hides: there is no purely individual desire, all desire is social, all desire is political. We are desiring subjects because we are desired subjects.