Psychoanalysis has long been used as a tool to analyze the symptomology of individuals and nation states. But can it universally be applied to all? This article argues that psychoanalysis was born in the wake of the French Revolution as the subject of rights came to understand that it could make choices, but that these choices would not always be the right ones. In Douzinas’ () terms “every desire is a potential right” (p. 8), and this idea links desire to rights in a way that psychoanalytic theory and practice must contend. But it also offers the possibility that it is rights‐bearing subjects who are specifically desiring in the manner that psychoanalysis proposes. In this article, I examine the symptoms of rights‐bearing subjects as they have emerged in a particular politico‐legal history. I argue that the symptoms of subjects must be understood in the context of their politico‐legal history, including its formation, and I examine how the neglect of this account of history—particularly in the context of Australia—can miss the colonial violences that are inherent in law (as a symptom) but also in psychoanalysis as itself a symptom of a particular historical scene.