the unconscious and of its sexual underpinnings. Because of this major
discrepancy between the two sides of the Atlantic, it seemed worthwhile
to ask whether borderline states are an invention or, instead, a true dis-
covery of an entirely new ailment. (This point is discussed in my opening
remarks to the conference.) As the conference unfolded, however, it be-
came apparent that the concept of borderline psychopathology only mar-
ginally informed the exchanges that took place and that this concept could
no longer serve either to bridge or to highlight the differences of perspec-
tives that were being presented. Therefore when the organizers of the con-
ference became the editors of the present book, we decided that The Sub-
ject and the Self would be a more appropriate description of the two psychic
domains that were being compared.

"The subject" is a direct allusion to the subject of the unconscious, a
concept that underlies Lacan's reading of Freud. For Lacanian analysts the
subject of the unconscious is the only subject of concern. The "Lacanian"
unconscious has taken on a complexity akin to that of the concept of the
self in current American psychoanalysis, insofar as it obeys specific laws
and principles that the analyst must decipher. The Lacanian subject of the
unconscious "speaks" a language that reveals a mode of desiring of which
the conscious subject is unaware. In that sense the status of the ego, its
fragility or strength, falls outside the Lacanian analytic field. The ego is the
barrier that needs to be broken through in order to have access to a desire
that operates behind the subject's back. Coming to terms with this uncon-
scious desire enables the patient to lessen the grip of his ego's defenses
without having the latter become a focus of analytic treatment.

The theoretical divide between the subject of the unconscious and
the ego is no longer prevalent in American psychoanalysis. This is not to
say that the unconscious has disappeared from the psychoanalytic scene
but rather to suggest that in elaborating the concept of the self many
authors -- through different avenues -- seem to have merged the conscious
and unconscious strivings of the individual. The self stands for a richly
layered composite that far exceeds the Freudian notion of the ego as the
agent of the reality principle. The transference reveals the ways in which
primordial intersubjective relations have influenced the shaping of the
patient's self and its vicissitudes: such an approach no longer relies on
Freud's Oedipus complex or on instinct theory to explain the genesis of
psychopathology.

In hindsight, therefore, our subtitle, The Subject and the Self, conveys
the editors' sense of the overall import of the conference and indicates how

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