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Born on [[{{Y}}|13 April 1901]], [[Jacques Marie Émile Lacan]] was the first child of [[Charles Marie Alfred Lacan]] and [[Émilie Philippine Marie Baudry]]. [[Alfred Lacan]] was the Paris sales [[representative ]] of a large provincial firm. The family lived in comfortable [[conditions ]] in the Boulevard du Beaumarchais before moving to the Montparnasse area where Jacques entered the prestigious [[Catholic ]] [[school]], the [[Collège Stanislas]].

An outstanding pupil, he excelled in [[religion|religious studies]] and [[Latin]]. As a teenager, [[Jacques Lacan]] developed a [[passion ]] for [[philosophy]], adorning the walls of his bedroom with a plan of the [[structure]] of [[Spinoza]]'s ''[[Ethics]]'', a [[text ]] which would always remain dear to him and which he would quote at the start of his [[doctoral dissertation]] in [[medicine]].

<!-- =====[[Surrealism]]===== -->[[Lacan]] took up the study of [[medicine]] in [[{{Y}}|1920]] and specialized in [[psychiatry]] from [[{{Y}}|1926]]. During this period, he was [[active ]] in the busy [[Paris]]ian world of the writers, artists and intellectuals who made up the [[surrealism|surrealist movement]].

He frequented Adirenne Monnier's booshop on the [[Left ]] Bank, along with the lies likes of AndrE André Gide and [[Paul ]] [[Claudel ]] and, at the age of seventeen, met [[James Joyce]].

([[Three ]] years later he was present at he first [[public reaing ]] [[reading]] of [[Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses]]'' in the legendary bookshop, [[Shakespeare ]] & Co.)

His internship at [[St-Anne hospital]], starting in [[{{Y}}|1926]], and at the [[Infirmerie Spéciale des Aliénés de la Préfecture de Police]], in [[{{Y}}|1928]], gave [[Lacan]] a [[particular ]] interest in the study of [[paranoia]].

Later he would say that "My only real master in psychiatry was Gaëtan Gatian de [[Clérambault]]."

[[Lacan]] singled out his [[concept ]] of "[[mental automatism]]". This brought together many seemingly disparate phnomena of [[madness]] under the common motif of ''something being imposed from 'outside''': the echo of [[thoughts ]] or a commentary on one's actions, for example.

The [[form ]] of a particular [[psychosis]] would then be determined by how one ''[[signification|made sense]]'' of these elements which lacked an initial [[content]]. [[Lacan]] would say that this concept was the closest that contemporary [[France|French]] [[psychiatry]] got to a [[structural analysis]], with its emphasis on the imposition of formal elements beyond the "[[conscious]]" [[control]] of the [[subject]].

<!-- Salvidor [[Dali ]] referred to Lacan's [[work ]] in the first issue of the surrealist review, Minotaure, in 1933. Lacan often contributed to Minotaure. Paul Eluard championed the [[poetry ]] of the patient, Aimée, that Lacan described in his 1932 thesis. -->

The [[thesis]] contains a detailed analysis of a [[woman]], named [[Aimée]] after the heroine of one of her unpublished novels, who had attempted to stab a well-known [[Paris]]ian acctress, [[Huguette Duflos]]. The case was widely reported in the press at the [[time]], and [[Lacan]] tried gradually to piece together the [[logic ]] behind her apparently [[irrational ]] [[act]]. His [[thesis]] introduced a new concept into the [[psychiatry|psychiatric milieu]], that of "[[self-punishment paranoia]]". [[Lacan]] argued that, in striking the actress, [[Aimée]] was in fact striking herself: [[Duflos]] represented a [[woman]] with [[freedom]] and [[culture|social prestige]], exactly the sort of [[woman]] that [[Aimée]] aspired to become.

In her [[ideas ]] of [[persecution]], it was this [[figure ]] that she saw as the source of [[threats]] to her and her young son. The [[ideal image]] was thus both the [[object]] of her [[hate]] and of her aspiration. [[Lacan]] was especially interested here in this [[complex ]] relation to [[image]]s and the ideas of [[identity]] to be found in [[paranoia]]. In her subsequent arrest and confinement, she found the [[punishment]] which was a real source of the [[act]] itself. She [[understood]], at a certain level, that ''she was herself the [[object]] of [[punishment]]''.

[[Lacan]]'s analysis of the [[case]] shows many of the features which would later become central to his work: [[narcissism]], the [[image]], the [[ideal]], and how the [[personality]] could extend beyond the limits of the [[body]] and be constituted within a [[symbolic|complex social network]]. The actress represented a part of [[Aimée]] herself, indicating how the [[identity]] of a [[human]] [[being]] could include elements well [[outside]] the [[biological]] boundaries of the [[body]]. In a [[sense]], ''[[Aimée]]'s [[identity]] was literally [[outside]] of herself''.

Instead of confining himself to the standard [[texts ]] in [[psychiatry]] and [[psychoanalysis]], [[Lacan]] read widely, with a special interest in the [[philosophy|philosophical work]] of [[Karl Jaspers]], [[G.W.F. Hegel]] and [[Martin Heidegger]]. He attended the [[seminar]]s on [[Hegel]] given by [[Alexandre Kojève]] together with many of the thinkers who would leave their mark on [[France|French]] [[intellectual ]] [[life]], [[Georges Bataille]], Raymond Aron, Pierre Klossowski and Raymond Queneau.

[[Lacan]] made his first [[intervention ]] at the annual Congress of the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]], held at [[Marienbad]], in [[{{Y}}#1936|1936]]. He developed the thesis of the "[[mirror phase]]." The original text of this paper is lost, but the brilliant article on the [[family]] which [[Lacan]] contributed to the ''[[Encyclopédie Française]]'' in [[{{Y}}#1938|1938]], together with a later version of the paper, presents the argument clearly.<!-- But his paper was interruted by the chairman of the [[session]], Ernest [[Jones]], Freud's biographer. -->

''[[Humans]] are [[born]] [[helplessness|prematurely]].'' Left to themselves, they would probably [[die]]. They are always [[born]] too [[time|early]]. They can't walk or [[speech|talk]] at [[birth]]: they have a very [[partial ]] [[mastery]] of their motor functions and, at the [[biology|biological level]], they are hardly [[complete]]. The [[infant]] can't pick things up or move towards or away from things. So how does the child come to [[master]] its relation to its [[body]]? How does it respond to its "[[prematuration]]"?

[[Lacan]]'s answer is in the [[theory ]] of the [[mirror phase]]. He draws our attention, in later texts, to an [[enthological]] curiosity, known as "[[mimicry]]." Certain beasts have the habit of assuming the insignia and coloring of their surroundings. Hence a stick insect may choose to look like a stick. The obvious explanation for this phenomenon is that it protects the [[animal ]] against predators. But what many investigators found was that those animals which assumed an [[image]] or disguise were just as likely to be eaten as those which didn't.

The US [[government ]] had commissioned a survey in the early 1930s involving the rather macabre task of examining the stomaches of some 60,000 Neartic birds to confirm this diagnosis by counting the insects which had been swallowed. The ones which had disguised themselves were no less frequent than their most honest companions. So if evolutionary [[biology ]] cannot provide an answer to the question of [[mimetism]] with the [[idea ]] of protection from predators, how can it be explained?

[[Roger Caillois]], a [[French ]] thinker fascinated with the theme of masks, [[games ]] and the relation of the [[human]] to the [[animal kingdom]], argued that there was a sort of [[natural]] [[law]] whereby ''organisms become [[captured]] in their [[environment]]''. They will thus take on the coloring, for example, of the [[space]] around [[them]].

In the 1938 encyclopedia article, this idea is used to give a brilliant explanation of the inexplicable swings in a [[child]]'s [[behavior]] from the tyrannical or [[seductive]] attitude to its opposite. Rather than linking this to a [[conflict ]] between two individuals, the [[child]] and the [[spectator]] in this [[instance]], [[Lacan]] argues that it derives from a conflict [[internal]] to each of them, resulting from ''an [[identification]] with the [[other ]] party''. This is an organizing [[principle ]] of [[development]] rather than a single [[moment ]] in [[childhood]]. (If I have [[identified]] with an [[image]] [[outside]] myself, I can do things I couldn't do before.)

<!-- But all this is at a price. If I am in the [[place ]] of another child, when he's struck, I will cry. If he wants something, I'll [[want ]] it too, because I am in his place. I am trapped in an image fundamentally alien to me, outside me. -->

[[Lacan]] shows how this [[alienation]] in the [[image]] corresponds with the [[ego]]: ''the [[ego]] is constituted by an [[alienating]] [[identification]], based on an initial [[lack]] of [[completeness]] in the [[body]] and nervous system.

[[Lacan]]'s thesis provided a response to the question posed by [[Freud]] in his famous 1914 paper on [[Narcissism]]. If the [[ego]] is the seat of [[narcissism]] and if [[narcissism]] does not [[exist ]] from the start of life, what must happen for [[narcissism]] to emerge? Some "new [[psychical ]] [[action]]" must take place to constitute the [[ego]], but [[Freud]] didn't say what it was. With the [[mirror phase]], [[Lacan]] had found an answer.

In other [[words]], rationalizations of the hypnotized persons' actions wer eproduced were produced which had the function of glossing over the [[true ]] state of affairs. Whereas other commentators had drawn attention to this ''"falsifying [[character ]] of the ego'' " in the isolated context of negative hallucination, [[Freud]] and [[Lacan]] saw it as the basic characteristic of the [[ego]] at all [[times]].

As with the [[ego]] of the [[mirror phase]], its task is to maintain a false [[appearance ]] of [[coherence]] and [[completeness]]. Thus [[analysis]] must be mistrustful and subversive of [[material ]] which stems from the [[ego]] [[domain]].) Any theory of [[psychoanalysis]] which involved the idea of the analyst making an alliance or pact with the [[patient]]'s [[ego]] was thus fundamentally ill-starred. It could only result in a mutual [[deception]].

In this early part of [[Lacan]]'s work, the [[human]] [[subject]] oscillates between two poles: the [[image]], which is [[alienating]], and the [[real]] [[body]], which is in pieces. In his work of the 1930s and early 1940s, [[Lacan]] often attempts to show the [[presence ]] of these [[images]] of the [[fragmented body]] beneath the classic [[psychoanalytic]] [[complexes]].

(The [[phantasy]] of [[fragmentation]] may be found beneath the more celebrated [[phantasy]] of [[castration]]. (He developed the thesis that ''"in [[paranoia]] we can [[witness ]] a sort of decomposition'' " which illustrates clearly the [[stages ]] in the "normal" [[constitution ]] of the [[image]] and of [[reality]] as such.

For example, the motifs of mirrored images, telepathic [[communication]], observation and external persecution so common in [[paranoia]] may be understood as fundamental building blocks in the constitution of the [[ego]]. If the [[ego]] is constructed on an [[image]] outside ourselves, if our identity if given in an [[alienation]].... (The [[truth ]] of the ego emerges precisely in [[madness]] where the world seems to dissolve and the difference between [[self ]] and other is radically put in question.)

In our day-to-day [[relationship ]] with other [[people]], we are unaware of these criteria, even if many works of [[art]], notably those of Dali, try to capture this idea. ([[Lacan]] was thus led to the theory that [[human]] [[knowledge]] is in its very [[essence ]] [[paranoiac]].)

(Although Lacan's theory of the image at this date is often explained in [[terms ]] of the influence of surrealism, it owes much more to certain currents in French psychiatry such as the work of Joseph Capgras and those [[psychiatric ]] thinkers interested in problems of [[recognition]], doubling and the image. Lacan often returned to the [[notion ]] of the [[mirror ]] [[phase ]] to reformulate it during his teaching. It never stayed static. There is no one theory of the mirror phase in Lacan's work, but several.)

With the [[German ]] Occupation of [[France]], Lacan was called up to serve in the French [[army ]] and then posted to the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. A relationship began between Lacan and [[Sylvia ]] [[Bataille ]] (née Maklèes), whom he was later to marry. She was the wife of the writer and theorist [[Georges Bataille]], although the two had been separated since 1933. She was well known for her roles in the [[films ]] of Jean Renoir, the most famous of these perhaps being the heroine in ''Une Partie de Campagne''. During the Occupation, [[Lacan]] made frequent trips from Paris to the South of France to see her, and in 1941 their daughter [[Judith]] was born.

Lacan took the decision not to publish anything during the war years. In 1945, after the war had ended, he visited England for a five-week study trip, described in the article "[[English ]] Psychiatry and the War" (1947). He had a special admiration, he said, for the English during the war, and he reviewed the work of Wilfred Bion and John Rickman whom he had met during his stay. (They tried to use psychoanalytic ideas in the rehabilitation of army misfits).

Lacan was especially interested in their work with small groups. Rather than being organized around the presence of an [[authority ]] figure with whom they were supposed to [[identify]], these groups were centered on activities. (A group forms round a task or [[activity]], indicating a different sort of identificatory [[process]].) This sensitivity to problems of identification was praised by Lacan and he claimed that [[Britain]]'s success in the war was in no small part a consequence of introducing such ideas to the military.

From [[{{Y}}#1951|1951]], [[Lacan]] held a weekly [[seminar]] in which he urged what he called a [[return]] to [[Freud]]. (He advocated a careful rereading, focusing on the constant reference to language and its functions in Freud's work.) The ''[[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams]]'', the ''[[Project]]'' of 1895, ''The [[Psychopathology ]] of Everyday Life'' and ''[[Jokes ]] and their Relation to the Unconscious'' all deal with operations which are fundamentally of a [[linguistic]] [[nature]], from [[associations ]] between words to the very [[structure]] of [[symptoms]] themselves.

[[Freud]] had already spoken of "''symptoms joining in the conversation''" as early as 1895. (A patient might have sudden pains at precise moments in her [[speech]]. The [[pain ]] would indicate that something had been left unsaid, showing how [[physical ]] sensations themselves could be [[linguistic]], sending a [[message]] to be picked up by the [[analyst]].)

(Freud showed how symptoms and actions could literally be words trapped in the body. A woman who wishes to have a child jumps from an embankment, the word she uses for "jump" (''niederkommen'') being identical with the word meaning "be delivered of a child". A man's attraction to [[women ]] with a "shine" on the nose could be traced to the [[verbal ]] equivalence between the word for "shine" in German (''Glanz'') and the English word "glance".)

A whole [[neurosis]] could be organized by words and the relation between them. The case of the [[Rat Man]] discussed by [[Freud]] shows how a massive network of [[symptom]]s, compulsions and actions depended on the [[links ]] between the words ''Spielratte'' (gambler), ''heiraten'' (to marry) and ''raten'' (instalments). ''Words became the very stuff of symptoms, the fabric of the life and torment of human beings''.

Crucial to Lacan's programme of a [[return to Freud ]] is the [[distinction ]] between [[signifier]] and [[signified]]. According to a well-known definition, a ''a [[signifier]] is an acoustic image'' ( like a word, ''a [[signified]] is a concept''. The [[signified]] has a kind of priority and we use [[signifiers]] to gain access to [[signified]]s: or, put more simply, to say what we mean. A word gives us access to a meaning. The passage from word to meaning seems simple enough. We can ask for some object, the listener will [[understand ]] our meaning and respond with the object. Language is thus all [[about ]] [[communicating ]] with each other. We use words to convey [[meanings ]] and intentions.

But Lacan saw things differently. Rather than supposing a [[transparency ]] between [[signifier]] and [[signified]], an easy access from [[word]] to [[meaning]], he claimed there was a real [[barrier]], a [[resistance]]. (A word does not reveal its meaning so simply. Rather, it leads on to other words in a [[linguistic]] [[chain]], just like one [[meaning]] itself leads to [[others]].)

(The [[Rat Man]]'s ''raten'' does not point to the meaning "instalments" but to other linguistic elements like ''heiraten'' and ''Spielratte'', even though he might not have been aware of these links at all. The group of meanings is organized by the links between the words. There is thus ''a priority of the signifier'', of the material, verbal element in [[psychic ]] life.)

From the start of the 1950s, Lacan stressed more and more in his work the [[power ]] and organizing principle of the [[symbolic]], understood as the networks, [[social]], [[cultural]], linguistic, into which a [[child]] is [[born]]. These preced the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that ''language is there from before the actual moment of birth''. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the [[family]] and, of course, in the ideals, goals and histories of the [[parents]]. Even before a [[child]] is [[born]], the parents have talked about him or her, chosen a [[name]], mapped out his or her [[future]]. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet ''it will act on the whole of the child's existence''.

This idea has obvious conseuqneces for the theory of the mirror phase. If Lacan had first stressed the ''imaginary'' identification, he now discussed its ''symbolic'' side. If the child is captured in an image, he or she will still assume [[signifier]]s from the speech of the parents as elements of identification. (As a [[mother]] raises the [[baby ]] to see its [[reflection]], she might say, "you've got grandma's eyes" or "you look just like your [[father]]." These are symbolic pronouncements since they situated the child in a lineage, in a symbolic [[universe]].) ''The baby is bound to its image by words and names'', by linguistic representations. A mother who keeps telling her son "What a bad boy you are!" may end up with either a villain or a saint. ''The identity of the child will depend on how he or she assumes the words of the parents''.

There is thus an identification which is beyond and in a sense prior to the identification with the image: a ''[[symbolic identification ]] with a signifying element''. (If narcissism is about one's relation to one's image, this shows how narcissism is not only imagianry but includes a symbolic [[dimension ]] as well.) Lacan calls this an ''identification with the Ideal'', a term which is not intended to [[suggest ]] anything perfect or literally "ideal". This ideal is not [[conscious]]. The child does not suddently decide to put himself or herself in the shoes of some ancestor or family member. Rather, the speech which he or she hears as a child will be incorporated, forming a kernal of insignia which are [[unconscious]]. Their [[existence]] may be deduced from [[clinical ]] material. [[Analysis]] reveals the central identifications, how ''the subject has 'become' what a parent prophesied'' or how he or she has repeated the mistakes of a grandparent. ([[The symbolic ]] operates beyond the conscious control or [[understanding ]] of the plays involved.)

The key to the theory of identification here is that symbolic identification with an ''ideal element'' removes the subject from being completely at the mercy of the imaginary images which [[captivate ]] him or her. They come from another register, the symbolic, and thus serve to ground the subject, to give him a base, in this [[structure]]. (To take on a place in the symbolic world means leaving the world of the image.)

The [[narcissistic ]] [[imaginary register ]] which Lacan had elaborated in such detail in his early work is now shown to rest on a symbolic foundation: ''the relation to the image will be [[structured ]] by language''. (My relation with myself is constructed "from the outside." I learn who I am because others tell me.) Images are caught up in a complex symbolic web which manoeuvres them, combines them and organizes their relations.

Hence, Lacan's differentiation of ''ego ideal'' and ''[[ideal ego]]'', two terms which we can find at some points in the work of Freud. In Lacan's formulation of 1953, ''the ideal ego is the iamge you assume and the ego ideal is the symbolic point which gives you a place and supplies the point from which you are looked at''. If you [[drive ]] a car fast, it might be because you assume the iamge of some [[race ]] [[driver]]. You identify with him, and this would involve the ideal ego. But the real question is, ''who is it that you are [[identifying ]] with this racing driver for''? (Who you drive fast, who do you [[think ]] is watching you?) This is the dimension of the [[ego ideal]]. CLinically, pointing out to a patient an ideal ego identification usually has little effect: to dislodge it, an appeal must be made to the symbolic dimension, to the register of the ego ideal.

What characterizes the symbolic register here is something very particular. Thinkers influences by developments in [[linguistics ]] had the idea that any [[structure]] is a [[linguistic]] one if it has the simple quality of being based on a system of differences. ''A word is a word because it is different from other words'': "cat" has its [[value ]] because it is different from "mat", "fat" and "cot", for example. ''It takes on its value because it is an element in a system of differences''.

Thus ''the central property of a linguistic system is discontinuity'', the existence of a series of differential elements. Discontinuity means gaps: there is a space between elements. This discontinuity is set in opposition by Lacan to the imaginary register which strives to avoid the dimension of lack or [[absence]]. This endeavor is of course inauthentic, since the imaginary itself is based on a serious and troubling form of discontinuity, ''the gap between the child's uncoordinated body and the envelope of the whole image which it assumes''.

If the ego is imaginary, the unconscious for Lacan is structured like a language; that is, it is constituted by a series of chains of signifying elements. Like an infernal translating [[machine]], it turns words into symptoms, it inscribes signifiers into the flesh or turns them into tormenting thoughts or compulsions. ''A symptom may be literally a word trapped in the body''. [[Remember ]] that all that children really [[know ]] about their internal organs is what their parents tell them. The [[inside ]] of their body is thus made up of words. Doctors are familiar with [[patients ]] who complain of pains when a biological [[cause ]] is clearly [[absent]]. This does not mean that the pain is false: it is exactly the same pain, perhaps even a greater one, as if it were caused by some real physical determinant. (I suffer from the idea that I associate with the idea of a particular [[organ]].) To relieve the pain, the [[repressed ]] ideas need to be linked to the rest of the [[signifying chain]]. They have to undergo a new [[translation]].

''A symptom is made up of words''. A [[metaphor ]] involves the [[substitution ]] of one element for another. This is the very structure of the symptom - one term is substituted for another, which is kept repressed. ''When it is connected with the rest of the chain of words, there will be an effect on the symptom''.

[[Lacan]]'s sensitivity to discontinuity led to a radical [[change ]] which he introduced into the [[practice ]] of psychoanalysis. Whereas his contemporaries worked with an average 50-minute session, Lacan made the length variable. (I never know when the session is going to end....) ''The session is stopped on an important word or phrase'', and the patient is then left to meditate on this until the next session. This [[technique ]] has several advantages over the standard 50-minute session. First, it has been demonstrated that interrupted activities produce more associative material than completed ones. This capacity of interruption to generate [[memories ]] and associative amterial forms one part of the rationale of the [[variable session]]. The broken sessions may evoke the broken [[Oedipal ]] love relations. There is also the effort to avoid [[suggestion ]] or, in everyday language, brainwashing the patient. Thus, instead of being offered a running commentary on the [[analytic ]] material, the patient himself or herself is, through the breaks in the sessions, allowed to do much of the work. (Variable time is invaluable in combating many forms of resistance, such as the common one of patients' preparing their sessions in advance.) In the atmosphere of a variable session, there is a certain degree of tension - one does not know when it is going to end - and this tension serves to generate material and upset standard patterns of resistance. To understand what a variable session is about, one has to [[experience ]] it, as the real experience of time which it introduces is startling, disturbing and completely unexpected. (The dimension of discontinuity and rupture introduced by the variability of the length of the sessions is thus effective in ''generating the most hidden material''.)

[[Lacan]] elaborated on his conception of the relatiosn of the [[imaginary]] and the [[symbolic]] in his famous [[Rome Discourse]] of 1953, "The [[Function and Field of Speech and Language ]] in Psychoanalysis". This paper served to dispel a common confusion between speech and language. Language, as we have just seen, is considered as an abstract structure, a formal system of differences. But speech supposes the [[existence]] of a [[speaker ]] ... and a listener. If language is a [[structure]], [[speech]] is an [[act]], generating [[meaning]] as it is spoken and giving an [[identity]] to the speakers involved.

Saying "You are my master" gives a [[signification]] to the [[position ]] of the speaker: either as the [[slave]], or, more likely, as someone who does everything apart from accept the position of slave. [[Speaking ]] thus determines one's position as speaker, ''it gives one a place''. As a [[patient]] speaks, such [[signification]]s will emerge which are [[unconscious]]. (he words I use mean more than I mean in using them. They carry meanings which are beyond his or her conscious understanding and control. As the analysis continues, the message can be sent back to the patient. (The subject receives the message in inverted form. His desire can finally become recognized.)

At this point in his work, Lacan [[thought ]] that speech had a subject who strives for the recognition of his or her desire. Since speech usually has the opposite effect, that of blocking recognition, this is hardly an obvious outcome. And if recognition is seen as central to a theory of how speech works, it supposes the existence of an Other, ''a place from which you are heard, from which you are recognized''. (The Other is thus the place of [[language]], external to the speaker, and yet, since he or she is a speaker, internal at the same time.) To the extent that Lacan associates speech and the symbolic, it is possible for the subject to be recognized, to find some kind of [[identity]], in the [[symbolic]] [[order]].

To the symbolic and the imaginary, Lacan adds the [[category ]] of [[the Real]], something he reformulated at several moment in his work. In 1953, ''the real is simply that which isn't [[symbolized]]'', which is excluded from the symbolic. As Lacan says, the real "is that which resists [[symbolization ]] absolutely." He calls ''the real, the symbolic and the imaginary the "three [[registers ]] of human reality." Thus, what we ordinarily [[speak ]] of as "reality" would best be defined as an amalgam of symbolic and imaginary: imaginary to the extent that we are situated in the [[specular ]] register and the ego offers us rationalizations of our actions; and symbolic to the extent that most things around us have meaning. (Everyday [[objects ]] are symbolized in the sense that they mean something, they have a signification. Sometimes an object loses its meaning. I look at an everyday object as if it is mysterious and [[uncanny]].) ''The real would [[represent ]] precisely what is excluded from our reality'', the margin of what is without [[meaning]] and which we fail to situate or explore.

(Nor did Lacan see eye to eye with the [[SPP]] on the question of psychoanalytic [[training]].) Leaving the [[SPP]] to form the [[SFP]] had the consequence, unknown to Lacan and his colleagues, of depriving them of membership of the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]], and, in the following years, a complex process of negotiation was to take place to determine the status of the new group.

In his work of the early 1950s, Lacan saw the image as the central source of resistance in psychoanalytic [[treatment]]. ''The ego is made up of privileged images and the task of analysis is to dissolve them''. They must be integrated in speech and the symbolic network, rather than remaining stagnant and inert, blocking the [[dialectical ]] progression of speech. (The initial step in analysis is to reveal not what the patient is saying, but from where they are speaking - to reveal where their imaginary alienation is situated. Understanding what someone is saying must come after this.)

''When the patient says "I", the analyst should be mistrustful''! "I" must be separated from the "[[ego]]". The "I" of [[speech]] might seem to refer to the person sitting in front of you, but this is not the same [[thing ]] as the [[ego]], the site of the [[imaginary]] [[identification]]. (When a patient says "I", the analyst shouldn't be fooled!) ''It is necessary to see from where he is speaking'', perhaps the place of a sibling, a friend or a parent who has been identified with at an unconscious level.

[[Lacan]] introduced the distinction between the [[ego]] and what he called the [[subject]]. ''The [[ego]] is [[imaginary]], whereas the [[subject]] is linked by [[Lacan]] to the [[symbolic]]''. It is a fundamentally [[split]] or [[divided ]] entity: split by the [[law]]s of [[language]] to which it is subordinate, and split to the extent that it does not know what it wants. This divided subject does not have any one [[representation]], but emerges rather at moment of discontinuity: for example, in a [[slip ]] of the tongue or a [[bungled ]] action.

For the [[obsessional]], the question is: ''Am I alive or [[dead]]''? He will spend his life never acting, but waiting. When he has a problem, he won't get on the telephone, but will brood and think interminably. His life is mortified by [[rituals]], habits, rules. When it comes to action, he would rather that someone else act in his place, thus avoiding any real vital [[struggle ]] with another [[living ]] being. (Living outside myself in this way, I become a sort of living corpse.)

((Freud had linked this picture to an unconscious [[resolution ]] of a problem with the father. Rather than really fighting things out, the son imagines his feature is already dead. Lacan's version focuses on the place of the ego here. The obsessional not only awaits the [[death ]] of his master, but identifies with the master as already dead. Hence the mortified quality so common in [[obsession]].)) (I live my life according to strict routines and daily rituals, avoiding any [[encounter ]] with [[sexuality ]] not organized by myself.)

It is the task of [[analysis]], [[Lacan]] argues, to indicate to the [[subject]] the place of the [[ego]] and to turn the stagnatory [[image]]s which [[captive]] him into part of the associative material. ''Analysis thus involves the [[full ]] assumption by the [[subject]] of his or her [[history]]'': the images of the [[ego]] have to be integrated into this symbolic text. Analysis is thus a passage to the symbolic at this moment in Lacan's work, and he is continually elaborating his theory of this register with input from other fields, [[structural anthropology]] in particular.

Lacan's friend, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-[[Strauss]], was engaged in similar research at the time. He showed how symbolic structures which are not consciously perceived can organize and govern the workings of a society, and, indeed, the [[mind ]] of the [[individual]]. Lacan was especially interested in [[Lévi-Strauss]]'s use of the [[mathematical ]] group, a theme which he returned to several times in his own work.

During the 1940s and 1950s many new mathematical methods had been introduced into [[anthropology]]: [[algebraic ]] structures, structures of order and topologies. What interested Lacan in the early and mid 1950s was the algebraic side. An equation in mathematics could be associated with a group of permutations, and group theory is the part of [[mathematics]] which pays special attention to the properties of such groups. (Lacan had the idea that a neurosis might obey laws which could be studied in exactly the same way - that it might consist of a group of rules for permutation.)

An initial [[situation ]] - such as the details of the marriage of one's parents - would be transformed into certain rules in one's own life, completely [[unconsciously]], to generate situations - such as one's own marriage or love life - which both repeated the initial situation and transformed it in important ways. The laws of this transformation process could be given the same mathematical [[formalization ]] that anthropologists like Lévi-Strauss were employing.

Lacan's contact with [[structural ]] anthropology was also to result in a revision of the classical [[psychoanalytic theory ]] of the [[Oedipus ]] complex. Several anthropologists had noted that in certain societies the father is less the object of awe, [[fear ]] and [[rivalry ]] than the [[maternal ]] uncle. The oedipal structure does not suppose the existence of the "typical" nuclear family, but, via the wife - giving maternal uncle, it involves the whole tribe or clan. The [[sociologist ]] Marcel [[Mauss ]] had elaborated the idea that society is constituted and held together by ''a perpetual cycle of [[exchange ]] of gifts'' both within and between generations. (Gifts of property, goods and even people are what gives the symbolic [[texture ]] to society.) The givint itself rather than what you give is the key factor. It is symbolic.

Now, from these theories, it follows that a marriage will serve to cement relations in the [[community ]] and will make of the man and woman involved mere players in a larger symbolic organization. A marriage involves a whole community and not just the immediate relatives and parents. ''The man and woman thus become part of a symbolic chain''. The real, biological father is thus to be distinguished from the symbolic structures which organize the relation of man to woman. [[Paternity ]] has a symbolic side to it, and Lacan called this agency of paternity ''the [[name of the father]]''. ''It is not a real person but a symbolic function''.

This should not be confused, as it often is, with the real name of the father. It is merely a term to designate the symbolic side of paternity as opposed to its real nature, reduced in the modern world to sperm. A woman can become pregnant today without having had [[sexual ]] intercourse with a man: artificial insemination is made possible by [[science]], a fact which still illustrates the [[Lacanian ]] distinction between real and symbolic [[agencies]].

Now, Lacan argues that the [[Oedipus complex ]] will result in the child's entering the symbolic circuit and moving away from the immediate relation with the mother. This relation, however, is not a [[dual ]] one. It does not involve simply mother and child. (There are three terms present: the mother, the child and the object of the mother's desire - what Lacan calls "the phallus".) (However much the mother [[loves ]] her child, there will always be some margin, something to indicate to her child that what she desires is beyond it. The child realizes that he or she is not identical with what his or her mother desires.) Once this [[triangular ]] structure is established, the child can try, with the many games of [[seduction ]] that children are so [[good ]] at, to become this [[third ]] term, the object of the mother's desire. ''It is an attempt to be the phallus for the mother'', to incarnate the phallus in whatever form is particular to the individuals in question.

[[Lacan]] argues that this [[imaginary]] [[object]] of the [[child]]'s games must be transported to the [[symbolic]] [[level]]. ''The [[images]] which the [[child]] uses to entice the [[mother]] must be given up'', marked with the [[sign]] of [[prohibition]]. Now, this is where the [[anthropological]] stress on the [[role ]] of [[giving]] in [[society]] becomes so important. (If the symbolic network of a community is constituted by the exchange of gifts... and if the imaginary object of the child's games with the mother can be linked to this circuit, then the child will be able to leave the initial triangular regulation with the mother.)

He or she will be able to leave the universe of the mother to take on a place in the larger universe of the symbolic world. The imaginary object must take on the value of a [[gift]], and hence the crucial time of the Oedipus complex will involve establishing this new signification. ''The phallus will be the object promised to the child for use in the future'', it will become the object of a pact. (Some day, this will all be yours...) This promise supposes, of course, that what will be returned in the future has been taken away first. Assuming a [[sexual position ]] thus supposes an initial loss or subtraction. Lacan's theory of the Oedipus complex will be reformulated later on his his work, as we shall see.

By the late 1950s, Lacan's work shifts its focus from the problem of speech to the problem of language. Speech is an act, involving subject and other. [[Language]], however, ''is a [[structure]]'': as such, it does not supposed a [[subject]]. There is [[nothing ]] [[human]] about a [[language]], if it is seen as a ''[[formal]] [[system]] of [[difference]]s'' and distinguished clearly from [[speech]]. (The problem is exactly this. If language is an abstract structure, what kind of [[subject]] can be conceived for it? How does the [[human]] find a place in a [[structure]] which is intrinsically [[alien]] to it?)

((Try [[writing ]] a small ad. What you write is different from you. It may represent you, but in being represented, you have to confront the fact that words are not there to [[help ]] you. ''They have no been designed for you'', and yet you have to find your way around in the world of language in order to survive. (Words represent me, but are not for me...))) There is thus a new theory of [[alienation]] in [[Lacan]]. The early work referred to [[alienation]] in the [[register]] of the [[image]], and now ''[[alienation]] is situated in the [[register]] of [[language]]''. If [[speech]] was first seen as giving the [[subject]] some sort of [[identity]], now ''[[language]] has the role of blocking identity''. This is the difference between [[Lacan]]'s conception of [[language]] in 1953 and that of 1958: the [[subject]] is no longer recognized but abolished.

[[Demand]] is ultimately a [[demand]] for [[love]], and, for this [[reason]], [[unsatiable]]. If someone asks you if you love them and you say yes, that will not step them from asking you again and again and again. The [[impossibility ]] of really proving one's love once and for all is well known. Hence [[demand]] is a continuing spiral. But Lacan adds something more. To [[need]] and [[demand]], he adds the [[register]] of [[desire]]. ''[[Desire]] take sup what has been eclipsed at the level of [[need]]'' (the dimension represented by the [[mythical ]] water) and introduces an absolute condition in opposition to the absolutely unconditional nature of demand. (We can see this in cases where human desire literally has an absolute condition, in fetishism. I can only reach sexual enjoyment when a particular object or [[trait ]] is present in my partner, like a ribbon or a certain pair of boots.) ''[[Enjoyment]] is determined strictly by the [[present]] of this element''.

Although the example of [[fetishism]] is an extreme one, Lacan shows that it is at the horizon of all [[desire]] for the [[man]]. A [[man]]'s [[choice ]] of partner will always contain some reference to inhumane details: the color of the partner's hair, her eyes, etc. There is nothing "human" about such abstract features. ''Desire is thus linked to condition'' in contrast to the register of [[demand]]. (Part of the work of analysis is to try to tease out the [[subject's desire ]] from his incessant [[demands]]. The [[neurotic ]] is someone who privileges demand, who hides his desire beneath the imposing presence of demand.)

If demand is demand for an object, desire has ''nothing'' as its object: nothing in the sense of "''lack taken as an object''". Some [[clinical structures ]] show the different clearly. The anorexic, for example, in refusing to eat gives a place to desire beyond demand. To the mother's demand for the child to eat, the latter offers a symbolic [[refusal]], maintaining a desire centering on the "nothing" which is eaten. Into the relation with the mother, a lack is thereby introduced, ''something which marks out clearly the tension between [[demand]] and [[desire]]''.

Desire is thus a very peculiar thing. Lacan elaborates a theory of desire as something very strange ,very odd: it has nothing to do with wishes, but consists of linguistic mechanisms which twist and distort certain elements into others. A [[slip of the tongue ]] would provide another example. You say one thing instead of something else and you do not know why. ''Desire is present because one element has been distorted and modified by another one''. We can deduce the presence of desire in clinical work by paying attention to these [[processes ]] as they [[repeat ]] themselves and to the points of rupture, [[distortion ]] and opacity in a patient's associations.

If language has a capacity to transmit a message, it also has a redundant side. It's the different between a [[letter ]] and a telegram. The telegram conveys the minimum information content quickly, whereas the letter may dwell on details, use rhetorical devices and bow to the requirements of etiquette. Now, if we are to track down [[desire, ]] Lacan says, we will do best by ''focusing not on the message, but rather on the points of redundancy'', the little details which do not really need to be there.

If desire here is a process of distortion, a force at work in between signifiers, how can we speak about an [[object of desire]]? It would seem, on the contrary, as if desire did not have any object. Lacan replies that the object is of a very particular kind: an ''absent one''. It is not any absent object but, for Lacan at this moment in his work, a very precise one: ''the maternal phallus''. Freud and his followers, despite many disagreements, had always stressed the centrality of the [[castration complex]]. The key is less the possession by the [[subject]] of a [[phallus]], but where the [[mother]] has one or not. (The phallus is not the same thing as the [[penis]]: it is the penis plus the idea of [[lack]].) (if you think that you might lose your penis and that other people do not have this organ, the idea of loss will become linked to the organ in question. It will never be a penis again. In [[Freudian ]] theory it will be a ''penis plus the idea of its absence''. Hence what one searches for in the [[mother]] cannot be seen: how can one see something which is not there?

(As something [[missing]], the [[phallic ]] object is best represented by a [[veil ]] of something which covers or conceals. How else can a lack be represented, after all, than by the image of a [[screen ]] which points to something beyond itself? Later on in his work, Lacan would modify this conception. We will discuss it shortly, but it is important first to fill in some of the detail of this picture of the Oedipus and castration complexes.)

The child is at the mercy of the mother at the start of life, dependent on her in all senses of the word, and unable to understand the rationale of her behavior. However marvellous or cruel the mother may be, the same question will pose itself for the child, a question which concerns him or her to the quick: ''what does she want?'' (Why does she leave the room [[right ]] now? Why does she push the bottle into my mouth now? Why does she hold me so tight or so lightly today? Why does she allow my sister to go to bed so much later than me?)