Captation

captation (captation) The French substantive captation is a neologism

  coined by the French psychoanalysts Edouard Pichon and Odile Codet, from

the verb capter (which Forrester translates as 'to captate', reviving an obsolete

English verb in a quasi-technical sense - see S1, 146 and note). It was adopted

by Lacan in 1948 to refer to the imaginary effects of the SPECULAR IMAGE (see E,

18), and occurs regularly in his work from this point on. The double sense of

  the French term nicely indicates the ambiguous nature of the power of the

specular image. On the one hand, it has the sense of 'captivation', thus

expressing the fascinating, seductive power of the image. On the other hand,

the term also conveys the idea of 'capture', which evokes the more sinister

power of the image to imprison the subject in a disabling fixation.