insofar as the speaking subject is always already spoken, i.e., insofar as he cannot master the effects of what he is saying: he always says more than he “intended to say,” and this surplus of what is effectively said over the intended meaning puts in to words the repressed content-in it, “the repressed returns.” What are symptoms qua “returns of the repressed” if not such slips of the tongue by means of which “the letter arrives at its destination,” i.e., by means of which the big Other returns to the subject his own message in its true form? If instead of saying “Thereby I proclaim the session open,” I say “Thereby I proclaim the session closed,” do I not get, in the most literal sense, my own message back in its true, inverted form? So what could, at this level, the Derridean notion that a letter can also miss its destination mean? That the repressed can also not return-yet by claiming this, we entangle ourselves in a naive substantialist notion of the unconscious as a positive entity ontologically preceding its “returns,” i.e., symptoms qua compromise formations, a notion competently called in question by Derrida himself.

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