In 1957, Jacques Lacan, inspired by an article by linguist Roman Jakobson, argued that the unconscious has the same structure of a language, and that condensation and displacement are equivalent to the poetic functions of metaphor and metonymy.Roman Jakobson and Halle, Morris (1956) Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances in Fundamentals of Language. The Hague & Paris: Mouton, section The Metaphoric and Metonymic PolesGrigg, Russell (2009) Lacan, language, and philosophy, chapter 11 Lacan and Jakobson - Metaphor and Metonymy pp. 151–2, 160Lacan [1957] The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud. French original available here.
