Imaginary

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French: imaginaire
German: Imaginäre

Jacques Lacan

Lacan's use of the term "imaginary" as a substantive dates back to 1936.[1] The term relates to the dual relation between the ego and the specular image. From 1953 on, the imaginary becomes one of the three orders which constitute the tripartite scheme at the centre of Lacanian thought, being opposed to the symbolic and the real.

Ego Formation

The basis of the imaginary order continues to be the formation of the ego in the mirror stage.

Identification

Since the ego is formed by identifying with the counterpart or specular image, identification is an important aspect of the imaginary order. The ego and the counterpart form the prototypical dual relationship, and are interchangeable.

Alienation

This relation­ship whereby the ego is constituted by identification with the little other means that the ego, and the imaginary order itself, are both sites of a radical alienation;

"Alienation is constitutive of the imaginary order."[2]

Narcissism

The dual relationship between the ego and the counterpart is fundamentally narcissistic, and narcissism is another characteristic of the imaginary order. Narcissism is always accompanied by a certain aggressivity.

Deception

The imaginary is the realm of image and imagination, deception and lure. The principal illusions of the imaginary are those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity.

Captation

The imaginary exerts a captivating power over the subject, founded in the almost hypnotic effect of the specular image. The imaginary is thus rooted in subject's relationship to his own body (or rather to the image of his body). This captivating/capturing power is both seductive (the imaginary is manifest­ed above all on the sexual plane, in such forms as sexual display and courtship rituals)[3] and disabling: it imprisons the subject in series of static fixations.

Nature

The imaginary is the dimension of the human subject which is most closely linked to ethology and animal psychology.[4] All attempts to explain human subjectivity in terms of animal psychology are thus limited to the imaginary. Although the imaginary represents the closest point of contact between human subjectivity and animal ethology,[5] it is not simply identical; the imaginary order in human beings is structured by the symbolic, and this means that "in man, the imaginary relation has deviated [from the realm of nature]."[6]

Imaginary Reductionism

Lacan accused the major psychoanalytic schools of his day of reducing psychoanalysis to the imaginary order: these psychoanalysts made identification with the analyst into the goal of analysis, and reduced analysis to a dual relationship.[7] Lacan sees this as a complete betrayal of psychoanalysis, a deviation which can only eveer succeed in increasing the alienation of the subject.

See Also

References

  1. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p. 81
  2. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955-56. Trans. Russell Grigg. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 146
  3. Lacan, Jacques. "Situation de la psychanalyse et formation du psychanalyste en 1956." Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966 [1956b]: 272
  4. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955-56. Trans. Russell Grigg. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 253
  5. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p. 166
  6. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p. 210
  7. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 246-7