Psychoanalytic theory confers on the ego the function of accommodating intelligently to reality, and regulating the drives. When libidinal motivations are prevented from emerging as conscious intentions, they assume the features of pseudo-natural causes – that is, of the Id qua blind force dominating the subject behind his back. The Id penetrates the texture of everyday language by distorting grammar and confounding the proper use of public language through false semantic identifications: in symptoms, the subject speaks a kind of ‘private language’ that is incomprehensible to the conscious ego. In other words, symptoms are fragments of the public text chained to the symbols of illicit desires excluded from public communication