True Identity In Sigmund Freud's Rat Man

Sigmund Freud did not use the term signifier in relation to his work with the Rat Man. However, it was through this case, and its subsequent revisiting by Jacques Lacan, that we came to develop a more thorough understanding of how the unconscious mind works and in turn, the role that signifiers play, both in facilitating the creation of a condition, and in its eventual treatment.

The Rat Man, is a name that Sigmund Freud attributed to one of his case studies in order to protect the individual’s true identity. This patient sought Freud’s help in dealing with neuroses and anxieties which he felt had been restricting him from properly engaging with life, including fears that something will happen to his father or the woman he loves. Rat Man also

Freud noted that Rat Man himself seemed to derive sadistic or sexual pleasure from talking about this but it also caused him great anxiety, as he began to imagine / worry that this horror would be perpetrated on his beloved or on his (deceased) father. The subject’s anxiety is further demonstrated in Rat Man’s story about owing money to Capt A for glasses, a debt paid by a woman in the post office who Rat Man then in turn comes to owe. Rat Man’s roundabout, unnecessarily awkward and complex solution to this issue clearly demonstrates the procrastination and inhibition inherent in the obsessionals’ life. This is caused by the contradictory and opposing thoughts he experiences relating to this father, his beloved and repetitive images of their being tortured. The Cruel Captain seems to have been identified with Rat Man’s own father. This perhaps explains his obsession with the small debt, which he relates to his father’s far larger burden of debt (and to his father’s shamefully gambling away his regiments money only to be bailed out by a friend whom he could not subsequently locate in order to repay) and in turn to the two women with an interest in him. Further confusion in Rat Man’s emotional state is revealed when he confesses

Throughout the sessions, the word rat proved a signifier, with a huge number of associated unconscious material including connections between the Rat punishment for the criminals and anal eroticism and also between rats and money. In German, Ratten means rats whereas Raten means instalments which led Freud to observe that ‘he coined himself a regular rat currency’ (CITE Pg.213). While Freud views these ‘verbal bridges’ as the means by which the unconscious operates, Lacan viewed them as the very constituents of the unconscious (http://www.lacanonline.com/index/2010/06/what-does-lacan-say-about-the-signifier/). As Freud was using Free Association, Rat Man chose the aforementioned events of his life as being of primary significance and as such, we can see how the word Rat links these events and acts as a signifier in a variety of ways. This is not immediately revealed but when Freud (who did not actually use the word signifier) eventually reveals the connections between childhood events and feelings and issues the subject experiences in later life, the consistent connection to the term Rat becomes readily