Symbolic Overload and the Autopoietic Unconscious: A Systems‐Theoretical Reconstruction

ABSTRACT Functionally differentiated societies structurally expose psychic systems to polycontextural symbolic demands: the simultaneous application of incommensurable codes and programmes that cannot be hierarchically resolved. Although systems theory offers powerful tools for analysing how social systems cope with complexity through differentiation, codes and programmes, it provides only a limited account of how psychic systems remain operable when symbolic demands exceed the integrative capacity of reflexive consciousness. This article addresses this gap by proposing a systems‐theoretical reconstruction of the unconscious as a functionally differentiated mode of psychic operation. Through a formal translation of key Lacanian concepts, such as signifier, repression, foreclosure and jouissance, into the vocabulary of systems theory, we develop a model in which unconscious processing arises when distinctions generated by social communication can no longer be reflexively integrated. We term this condition symbolic overload . By reconceptualizing the unconscious as an emergent response to programmatic perturbations, the article contributes a novel, non‐humanist account of subjectivity that extends both psychoanalytic theory and systems research.