24,656
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[development ]] ([[French]]: ''[[développement]]'')
==Developmental Psychology==
==Jacques Lacan==
In his early work [[Lacan]] seems to accept this [[development]]al reading of [[Freud]], at least in the matter of a genetic order for the three 'family complexes' and for [[ego]] [[defence]]s.<ref>Lacan 1938; {{E}} p.5</ref>
In the early 1950s, [[Lacan]] becomes critical of [[development]] for various reasons.
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."<ref>{{E}} p.54)</ref>
He argues that the various '[[stage]]s' 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."<ref>{{E}} p.242</ref>
What interests [[Lacan]] is not the phenomena (external appearance) of [[language]] but the way [[language]] positions the [[subject]] in a [[symbolic]] [[structure]].
In respect of the latter, [[Lacan]] points out that 'the child already has an initial appreciation of the symbolism of language' well before he can speak, "well before the exteriorised appearance of language."<ref>{{Sl}} p.179; {{SlS1}} p.54</ref>
However, the question of how this 'initial appreciation' of the symbolic comes about is almost impossible to theorise, since it is not a question of a gradual acquisition of one signifier after another but the 'all or nothing' entry into a 'universe' of [[signifier]]s.
The [[mirror stage]] is clearly related to an event which can be located in a specific time in the life of the [[child]] (between six to eighteen months), but this event is only of interest to [[Lacan]] because it illustrates the essentially timeless [[structure]] of the [[dual relation]]ship; and it is this [[structure]] that constitutes the heart of the [[mirror stage]].
(It is interesting to note that the [[French ]] term stade can be understood in both temporal and spatial terms, as a '[[stage]]', or as a 'stadium').
Likewise, while [[Freud]] locates the [[Oedipus complex]] at a specific age (the third to the fifth year of life), [[Lacan]] conceives of the [[Oedipus complex]] as a timeless triangular [[structure]] of [[subjectivity]].
