Lacan as we have seen in our discussion of Freud regards the unconscious as structured like a language. This is not only because it works by metaphor and metonymy it is also because like language itself for the post-structuralists it is composed less of signs stable meanings than of signifiers. If you dream of a horse it is not immediately obvious what this signifies it may have many contradictory meanings may be just one of a whole chain of signifiers with equally multiple meanings. The image of the horse that is to say is not a sign in Saussures sense - it does not have one determined signified tied neatly to its tail - but is a signifier which may be attached to many different signifieds and which may itself bear the traces of the other signifiers which surround it. I was not aware when I wrote the above sentence of the word-play involved in horse and tail one signifier interacted with another against my conscious intention. The unconscious is just a continual movement and activity of signifiers whose signifieds are often inaccessible to us because they are repressed. This is why Lacan speaks of the unconscious as a sliding of the signified beneath the signifier as a constant fading and evaporation of meaning a bizarre modernist text which is almost unreadable and which will certainly never yield up its final secrets to interpretation.

I would close my eyes and dream of something strong dream of horses exploding rising into the air their hearts beating survive survive survive.

To be content horse people need only a horse or lacking that someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse real or imagined was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes Id tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. Hed lean over smile and assure me that one day Id have one for real. And if my grandfather my Opa told me something was going to come true it always did.