Ego

ego (moi) From very early on in his work, Lacan plays on the fact that the

  German term which Freud uses (Ich) can be translated into French by two

  words: moi (the usual term which French psychoanalysts use for Freud's Ich)

  and je. This had first been pointed out by the French grammarian, …douard

  Pichon (see Roudinesco, 1986: 301). Thus, for example, in his paper on the

  mirror stage, Lacan oscillates between the two terms (Lacan, 1949). While it is

  difficult to discern any systematic distinction between the two terms in this

  paper, it is clear that they are not simply used interchangeably, and in 1956 he

  is still groping for a way to distinguish clearly between them (S3, 261). It was

  the publication of Jakobson's paper on shifters in 1957 that allowed Lacan to

theorise the distinction more clearly; thus, in 1960, Lacan refers to the je as a

  SHIFTER, which designates but does not signify the subject of the enunciation

(E, 298). Most English translations make Lacan's usage clear by rendering moi

  as 'ego' and je as 'I'.

      When Lacan uses the Latin term ego (the term used to translate Freud's Ich

  in the Standard Edition), he uses it in the same sense as the term moi, but also

  means it to imply     a  more direct reference to Anglo-American schools of

psychoanalysis, especially EGO-PSYCHOLOGY.

      Freud's use of the term Ich (ego) is extremely complex and went through

many developments throughout the course of his work before coming to denote

  one of the three agencies of the so-called 'structural model' (the others being

the id and the superego). Despite the complexity of Freud's formulations on

the ego, Lacan discerns two main approaches to the ego in Freud's work, and

points out that they are apparently contradictory. On the one hand, in the

  context of the theory of narcissism, 'the ego takes sides against the object',

whereas on the other hand, in the context of the so-called 'structural model',

'the ego takes sides with the object' (Lacan, 1951b: 11). The former approach

places the ego firmly in the libidinal economy and links it with the pleasure

principle, whereas the latter approach links the ego to the perception-con-

sciousness system and opposes it to the pleasure principle. Lacan claims too

that the apparent contradiction between these two accounts 'disappears when

  we free ourselves from a naive conception of the reality-principle' (Lacan,

1951b: 11; see REALITY PRINCIPLE). Thus the reality that the ego mediates with,

in the latter account, is in fact made out of the pleasure principle which the ego

represents in the former account. However, it is arguable whether this argu-

 ment really resolves the contradiction or whether it does not, in effect, simply

privilege the former account at the expense of the latter (see S20, 53, where the

ego is said to grow 'in the flowerpot of the pleasure principle').

     Lacan argues that Freud's discovery of the unconscious removed the ego

from the central position to which western philosophy, at least since Descartes,

had traditionally assigned it. Lacan also argues that the proponents of ego-

psychology betrayed Freud's radical discovery by relocating the ego as the

  centre of the subject (see AUTONOMOUS EGO). In opposition to this school of

thought, Lacan maintains that the ego is not at the centre, that the ego is in fact

  an object.                '

     The ego is a construction which is formed by identification with the specular

image in the MIRROR STAGE. It is thus the place where the subject becomes

alienated from himself, transforming himself into the counterpart. This alien-

ation on which the ego is based is structurally similar to paranoia, which is

why Lacan writes that the ego has a paranoiac structure (E, 20). The ego is thus

  an imaginary formation, as opposed to the SUBJECT, which is a product of the

symbolic (see E, 128). Indeed, the ego is precisely a mÈconnaissance of the

symbolic order, the seat of resistance. The ego is structured like a symptom:

  'The ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it is

only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par excellence, the mental

illness of man' (Sl, 16).

      Lacan is therefore totally opposed to the idea, current in ego-psychology,

that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to strengthen the ego. Since the ego

  is 'the seat of illlusions' (Sl, 62), to increase its strength would only succeed in

increasing the subject's alienation. The ego is also the source of resistance to

psychoanalytic treatment, and thus to strengthen it would only increase those

resistances. Because of its imaginary fixity, the ego is resistant to all subjective

growth and change, and to the dialectical movement of desire. By undermining

  the fixity of the ego, psychoanalytic treatment aims to restore the dialectic of

  desire and reinitiate the coming-into-being of the subject.

      Lacan is opposed to the ego-psychology view which takes the ego of the

analysand to be the ally of the analyst in the treatment. He also rejects the view

  that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to promote the ADAPTATION of the

  ego to reality.

def

For Freud, the ego is "the representative of the outer world to the id" ("Ego and the Id" 708). In other words, the ego represents and enforces the reality-principle whereas the id is concerned only with the pleasure-principle. Whereas the ego is oriented towards perceptions in the real world, the id is oriented towards internal instincts; whereas the ego is associated with reason and sanity, the id belongs to the passions. The ego, however, is never able fully to distinguish itself from the id, of which the ego is, in fact, a part, which is why in his pictorial representation of the mind Freud does not provide a hard separation between the ego and the id. The ego could also be said to be a defense against the superego and its ability to drive the individual subject towards inaction or suicide as a result of crippling guilt. Freud sometimes represents the ego as continually struggling to defend itself from three dangers or masters: "from the external world, from the libido of the id, and from the severity of the super-ego" ("Ego and the Id" 716).