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"[[counterpart]]"
The [[counterpart]] plays an important part in the [[intrusion complex]] and in the [[mirror stage]] (which are themselves closely related.
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The [[intrusion complex]] is one of the three "family complxes" which [[Lacan]] discusses in his 1938 article on the family, and arises when the child first realizes that he has sinligns, that other subjects ''like him'' participate in the family structure.
The emphasis here is on likeness; the child identifies with his siblings on the basis of the recognition of bodily similarity (which depends, of course, on their being a relatively small age difference between the subject and his siblings).
It is this [[identification]] that gives rise to the "imago of the counterpart."<ref>Lacan, 1938: 35-9</ref>
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The [[iamgo]] of the [[counterpart]] is interchangeable with the [[image]] of the [[subject]]'s own [[body]], the [[specular image]] with which the [[subject]] [[identifies]] in the [[mirror stage]], leading to the [[formation]] of the [[ego]].
This interchangeability is evident in such phenomena as [[transitivism]], and illustrates the way that the [[subject]] constitutes his [[object]]s on the basis of his [[ego]].
The [[image]] of another person's [[body]] can only be [[identified]] with insofar as it is perceived as similar to one's own [[body]], and conversely the [[counterpart]] is only recognised as a [[separate]], [[identifiable]] [[ego]] by [[projection|projecting]] one's own [[ego]] onto him.
In 1955 [[Lacan]] introduces a distinction between 'the [[big Other]]' and 'the [[little other]]' (or 'the [[imaginary other]]'), reserving the latter term for the [[counterpart]] and/or [[specular image]].
The [[counterpart]] is the [[little other]] because it is not truly [[other]] at all; it is not the radical [[alterity]] represented by the [[Other]], but the [[other]] insofar as he is similar to the [[ego]] (hence the interchangeability of a and a' in [[schema L]]).
