Counterpart

def

This notion of the 'specular ego' was first developed in the essay, 'The mirror Stage.'

def

The term ‘counterpart’ (semblable) plays an important part in Lacan’s work from the 1930s on, and designates other people in whom the subject perceives a likeness to himslef (principally a visual likeness). The counterpart plays an important part in the intrusion complex and in the mirror stage.

The ‘imago of the counterpart’ is interchangeable with the image of the subject’s own body, the specular iamge with which the subject identifies in the mirror stage, leading to the formation of the ego. This interchangeability illustrates the way that the subject constitutes his objects on the basis of his ego. The image of another perosn’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 recognized as a separate, identifiable ego by projecting one’s own ego onto him.

def

counterpart (ge√labie) The term 'counterpart' plays an important

-part in Lacan's work from the 1930s on, and designates other people in whom

-the subject perceives a likeness to himself (principally a visual likeness). The

-counterpart plays an important part in the intrusion complex and in the MIRROR

     STAGE (Which are themselves closely interrelated).

        The intrusion complex is one of the three 'family complexes' which Lacan

     discusses in his 1938 article on the family, and arises when the child first

    realises that he has siblings, 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' (Lacan, 1938: 35-9).

        The imago 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 objects 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 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).