Lacan's well-known interest in Chinese culture and language is the starting point of the discussion put forth by this article: the relationship between the unconscious and writing, taking the Chinese ideogram as an example. Thus, informed by Lacan's dialogue with Linguistics (the works of Saussure and Benveniste), the tension between graphic and phonic elements can be observed. In the case of ideogrammatic language, the speculations of Chinese psychoanalysts also question the possible specificities of the Chinese unconscious.
Lacan; China; unconscious; writing; ideogram