Development

development (dÈveloppement) Psychoanalysis is presented by EGO-

   PSYCHOLOGY as a form of developmental psychology, with the emphasis placed

   on the temporal development of the child's sexuality. According to this

   interpretation, Freud shows how the child progresses through the various

   pregenital stages (the oral and anal stages) to maturity in the GENITAL Stage.

       In his early work Lacan       seems to accept this developmental reading of

   Freud (which he labels 'geneticism'), at least in the matter of a genetic

   order for the three 'family complexes' (Lacan, 1938) and for ego defences

    (E, 5). As late as 1950 he takes seriously such genetic concepts as 'objectal

   fixation' and 'stagnation of development' (Ec, 148). However, in the early

    1950s he begins to become extremely critical of geneticism for various

   reasons. Firstly, it presupposes a natural order for sexual development and

   takes   no account of the symbolic articulation of human sexuality, thus

    ignoring the fundamental differences between drives and instincts. Sec-

    ondly, it is based       on   a linear concept of time which is completely             at

    odds with the psychoanalytic theory of         TIME. Finally, it   assumes that    a

    final synthesis of sexuality is both possible and normal, whereas for Lacan

    no such synthesis exists. Thus, while both ego-psychology and oBJECT-RELA-

    TIONS THEORY propose the concept of a final stage of psychosexual develop-

    ment, in which the subject attains          a 'mature' relation with the object,

    described   as   a genital relation, this is totally rejected by Lacan. Lacan

    argues that such     a state of final wholeness and maturity is not possible

    because the subject is irremediably split, and the metonymy of desire is

    unstoppable. Furthermore, Lacan points out that 'the object which             corre-

    sponds to an advanced stage of instinctual maturity is a rediscovered object'

    (S4, 15); the so-called final stage of maturity is nothing               more than the

    encounter with the object of the first satisfactions of the child.

        Lacan disputes the geneticist reading of Freud, describing it as a 'mythology

    of instinctual maturation' (E, 54). He argues that the various 'stages' analysed

    by Freud (oral, anal and genital)        are not observable biological phenomena

    which develop naturally, such as the stages of sensoriomotor development, but

    'obviously more complex structures' (E, 242). The pregenital stages are not

    chronologically ordered moments of a child's development, but essentially

    timeless structures which are projected retroactively onto the past; 'they are

    ordered in the retroaction of the Oedipus complex' (E, 197). Lacan thus

    dismisses all attempts to draw empirical evidence for the sequence of psycho-

    sexual stages by means of 'the so-called direct observation of the child' (E,

    242), and places the emphasis on the reconstruction of such stages in the

    analysis of adults; 'It is by starting with the experience of the adult that we

   an analyst, is to undergo analytic treatment oneself. In the course of this

   treatment there will be a mutation in the economy of desire in the analyst-

   to-be; his desire will be restructured, reorganised (S8, 221-2). Only if this

   happens will he be able to function properly as an analyst.