Imaginary

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French: imaginaire
German: Imaginäre

Jacques Lacan

History

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 center of Lacanian thought, being opposed to the symbolic and the real.

Ego

The imaginary order is based on the formation of the ego in the mirror stage by identification with the counterpart or specular image.

The imaginary order is based on the mirror stage, whereby the ego is constituted by identification with the little other.

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


Image

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.

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)[2] and disabling: it imprisons the subject in series of static fixations.

Psychology

The imaginary is the dimension of the human subject which is most closely linked to ethology and animal psychology.[3] 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,[4] 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]."[5]

Criticism

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.[6] 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. "Situation de la psychanalyse et formation du psychanalyste en 1956." Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966 [1956b]: 272
  3. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955-56. Trans. Russell Grigg. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 253
  4. 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
  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. 210
  6. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 246-7

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