The linguistic dreamstate: Freud, Lacan, and intertextuality in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable

Michael R. Kay
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:51:50 PDT

This thesis focuses on the process of symbolization and signification in Samuel Beckett's novel, The Unnamable. The introduction presents readers with important and relevant critical interpretations of the novel, primarily those that are focused on the self, the use of language, and psychoanalytic theory. Then, the thesis introduces readers to key concepts in semiotic and psychoanalytic criticism, such as that of the signifier, sign, big-O Other, and the Lacanian Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real, by applying these concepts to a reading of The Unnamable. The next section, "The Linguistic Dreamstate," argues that the novel's narrator occupies a state tangential to consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness. In occupying this state, one that is outside of physical reality, the narrator is confronted with a language he does not understand and, while speaking, seeks to understand what he has previously said, mirroring the process of psychoanalysis as it concerns the meaning of dreams. Finally, it is shown that the narrator attempts to use language to as a means to stop using language. In so doing, the narrator illustrates the inability of language (and the Symbolic) to reconstruct the Real, and the innate desire for the Real (or objet a) even in those who do not have a reality within which they see the lack of the Real.