Jacques Lacan
(1901 - 1981)
French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Marie Émile Lacan influenced many leading French intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially those associated with post-structuralism. His ideas had a significant impact on post-structuralism, critical linguistics, critical theory, 20th-century French philosophy, film theory, and clinical psychoanalysis. In film theory, he is best known for his work on "lack," and for his theories of spectatorship based in "the mirror theory."
Lacan distinguishes between three kinds of lack: (1) Symbolic Castration and the Imaginary Phallus, (2) Imaginary Frustration and the Real Breast, and (3) Real Privation and the Symbolic Phallus, in a focus on castration as the primary symbol of lack. In looking at castration through the horror of lack, the absence of a penis in the Real Father, the Symbolic Mother, and the Imaginary Father creates a space for the symbolic version of the phallus
with the phallic symbol representing male generative powers. Lacan articulates the difference between "being" and "having" the phallus as locating power. Men are positioned as men in so far as they are seen to have or own the phallus, while women, in not having the phallus, are seen to "be" the phallus. The symbolic phallus is the concept of being the ultimate man, and having this is compared to having the divine gift of God.
Lacan also proposed that the “mirror stage” was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months. Lacan's concept of the mirror stage was strongly inspired by earlier work by psychologist Henri Wallon, who speculated based on observations of animals and humans responding to their reflections in mirrors. Wallon noted that by the age of about six months, human infants and chimpanzees both seem to recognize their reflection in a mirror. Human infants typically devoted much time and effort to exploring the connections between their bodies and their images, leading to exploration of “self.” By the early 1950s, Lacans concept of the mirror stage evolved to considered the mirror stage as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of "Imaginary order".
MOTIVATIONS / IDEAS
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There are three distinct forms of "lack" that establish desire in humans, and humans are driven by these desires.
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Greatly influenced by Freued. Believed that that Freud's ideas of "slips of the tongue," jokes, and the interpretation of dreams, all emphasized the agency of language in subjective constitution.
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Considered that the unconscious was not separate from the conscious.
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Believed that linguistic ego was a formation as complex and structurally sophisticated as consciousness itself.
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One consequence of his idea that the unconscious is structured like a language is that the self is denied any point of reference from which to which to be "restored" following trauma or a crisis of identity.
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The three orders:
(1) The Imaginary -- the field of images and imagination, and deception.
(2) The Symbolic -- the linguistic dimension.
(3) The Real -- not synonymous with reality, this opposes the Imaginary and works as the exterior for the Symbolic.
RELATED STUDY TERMS
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Concept of 'Other' -- used to refer to a person or thing that is different or distinct from the self already mentioned or known about.
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Desire -- a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
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Drive -- an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need.
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Lack -- the state of being without or not having enough of something; most often used to demonstrate locations and insufficiencies of power.