What Sort Of Language Is The Unconscious Structured Like? A Lacanian Neuropsychoanalytic Perspective

Lacan's return to Freud gravitates around his aphorism that <i>the unconscious is structured like a language</i>. This is often cause for criticism from non-Lacanian analysts. However, this aphorism has multiple meanings beyond the unconscious consisting of word-forms. This paper sketches relational, affective, neuropsychological, and Freudian criticisms of this linguistic unconscious. I will then highlight that the key signifier is "like": to be structured "like" a language is to be structured according to differential representatives. I conclude with a Lacanian neuropsychoanalytic functional model of differential representatives that need not be words.