For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence.

He defended three assertions: that psychoanalysis must have a scientific status; that Freudian ideas have radically changed the concepts of subject of knowledge and of desire; and that the analytic field is the only place from which it is possible to question the insufficiencies of science and philosophy. A notable exception is the works of Dr. " Hence desire can never be satisfied or as Slavoj Žižek puts it "desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal to find full satisfaction but to reproduce itself as desire.

His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory literary theory 20th-century French philosophy sociology feminist theory film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.