Was Lacan responsible for the semantic reversal of "overdetermination"? Freud seems to have appropriated this concept from algebra: if you have more equations than unknowns (linear systems) either the system is inconsistent or redundant. In the latter case the extra equations give you the same information as the other ones do, and the system is called overdetermined. Freud used this in his dream interpretation (which I have already villified). He thought symbols revealed the hidden meaning of dreams. If your dream has five symbols and they all mean the same thing, that's what your dream means and it is overdetermined. Not great psychology, but at least it is metaphorically correct with respect to math. Somewhere along the line (in France I think), the idea took hold that the world might be pictured as a mathematical system, except that the number of unknows exceeds the number of equations. Thus the outcome is indeterminate. And this situation was dubbed "overdetermination", reversing the original Freudian use and making hash of the math reference. (Veterans of the UMass econ department know this ever so well.) So whodunnit? Was it Lacan? Peter Dorman
