  For Butler the term psyche applies to more than simply the self or ego as constituted through gender imitation. In addition to the conscious self, she is also interested in the psychic workings of the unconscious as postulated in psychoanalysis. In Butler's view, the psyche outstrips the performatively constituted agent insofar as the repeated acts fail to entirely imitate the preceding ones and, indeed, insofar as they must be repeated at all (1991, 24). Butler allows for “psychic excess” which applies to that which is both presupposed by and yet excluded by heterosexual gender identities. For example, the love of the lost object discussed above cannot be allowed into the heterosexual gender identity. Nonetheless it is part of the psyche—is “psychic excess”—insofar as it is essentially presupposed by and yet disowned in the formation of heterosexual gender identity. Such excess manifests itself, for Butler, in performative failures and in behaviors which expose the imitative character of gender (24–5).