The name [[Lacan]] gives to this [[process]] of [[identity]] construction is [[{{Top}}misrecognition|méconnaissance]]: "self-knowledge (''me-connaissance'') is synonymous with misunderstanding (''méconnaissance''), because the process by which the [[ego]] is formed in the [[mirror stage]] is at the same time the institution of [[alienation]]."<ref>Evans 109</ref> In a typically Lacanian play on words, Evans points to the fundamental constitutive feature of the imaginary order and of all imaginary processes. The logic which lends this pun more weight that simply that of a clever word-play is that of an implicit grammar behind the imaginary [[identification]] of ego with [[specular image]]. In contrast to the [[ego-ideal]] ("I want to be that"), the ego is a version of "I am that."11 The [[symbolisation]] of this identification in this way allows us to see clearly into the irrationality governing the [[imaginary]]. The predicate "that" in the ego characterisation "I am that" deprives the subject ("I") of its content; the descriptive verb "am" effectively becomes a transitive that reveals the hollowness of the ego in its attempt to attain wholeness through the identification with and assimilation of an endless variety of "thats." The [[illusion]]s of identification produced in the imaginary, "those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity"<ref>Evans 82</ref> thus turn out to be "surface appearances which are deceptive, observable phenomena which hide underlying structure."<ref>Evans 82 12</ref>{{Bottom}}
This process of méconnaissance===Translation===Translator, originally conceived of by Lacan as merely a stopping point on the path of psychic Alan [[developmentSheridan]] (in his work from 1936-1949), becomes a constitutive feature of has decided to retain the mental life of the individual as the mirror stage loses its temporal focus and takes on a spatial reference (from 1950 on)<ref>Evans 115French [[word]].</ref> The "stade" [[sense]] is of the original French formulation a "stade du miroir" expands its meaning failure to include not only the temporal "stagerecognize" of routine translation, but also the spatial "stage" or "arenamisconstruction" of its secondary meaning.<ref>Evans 115</ref> In this expanded conceptualization of the lasting effects of the mirror stage as the inaugurating moment of the imaginary order The [[concept]] is central to [[Lacan]]'s [[thinking]], since, for him, the original méconnaissance that engenders the ego [[knowledge]] (''conaissance'') is compulsively repeated in a series of identifications inextricably bound up with (and potentially disabling fixations on) objects in their imaginary capacities (i''méconnaissance''.e. imaginary objects):
The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency [[French]] term ''[[méconnaissance]]'' corresponds roughly to anticipation – the [[English]] [[words]] "[[Méconnaissance|misunderstanding]]" and which manufactures for "[[Méconnaissance|misrecognition]]". However, the subject, caught up [[French]] term is usually [[left]] untranslated when translating [[Lacan]] into [[English]] in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image order to a form of show its totality that I shall call orthopaedic – and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark close [[relationship]] with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental developmentterm ''[[connaissance]]'' ("[[knowledge]]").<ref>Ecrits 4</ref>
The erstwhile transformative stage of ego development thus becomes an enduring psychic structure which constitutes the unsymbolised interiority of "identity." ===Neurotic Self-Knowledge===Coeval with the egoThus, in the [[imaginary thus persists as ]] [[order]], [[knowledge|self-knowledge]] (''me-connaissance'') is synonymous with [[méconnaissance|misunderstanding]] (''[[méconnaissance]]''), because the ground on [[process]] by which it thrives, holding its own against the violent encroachments of [[ego]] is formed in the [[mirror stage]] is at the real and same [[time]] the divisive incursions institution of [[alienation]] from the [[symbolic]] determination of [[being]].
Perhaps ===Paranoid Delusions===As well as being the best example [[structure]] of ordinary [[neurotic]] [[knowledge|self-knowledge]], ''[[méconnaissance]]'' is also the concrete instance [[structure]] of the imaginary identification between the ego and imaginary objects is provided by the way in which advertising works to create irrational but compelling associations with objects[[paranoiac]] [[delusions]], even in the face of the obvious incommensurability between the objects and that which is associated with them. Thus most commonly clothing or automobile commercials will use only slim, attractive spokespeople are described in clean, hygienic, and affluent surroundings as a way of creating matrices [[terms]] of imaginary associations around the objects for which they wish to create a desire''[[méconnaissance|méconnaissance systématique de la reéalité]]''. When the individual sees these associations made, he or she <ref>{{L}} "recognises" some aspect [[Works of himself or herself in Jacques Lacan|Some Reflections on the imaginary field created around the objectEgo]], identifies with it, and seeks to possess it as a concrete way of declaring his or her identity" ''Int. J. [[Psycho]]-[[Anal]]. The force of these imaginary identifications is manifest in the fact that even though they collapse into insipid manipulations with the least attempt at symbolisation (that is, representation in language'', rather than merely by associations of images), they nonetheless persist as powerful determinants of individual ego-formations and behaviour patternsvol.13 In more theoretical terms34, the original identificatory procedures which brought the ego into being 1953 [i.e. the mirror stage1951b] are repeated and reinforced by the individual in his relationship with the external world of people and things. The imaginary is the scene of a desperate delusional attempt to be and to remain ‘what one is’ by gathering to oneself ever more instances of sameness, resemblance and self-replication; it is the birthplace of the narcissistic ‘ideal egop.’<ref>Bowie 9212</ref>
The circularity and self-referentiality ===Paranoiac Knowledge===This [[structural]] homology between the ordinary [[constitution]] of this process is abundantly clear in Bowie’s articulation, as the [[ego both constructs an ideal version of itself on the basis of various imaginary features with which it would like to be identified, ]] and then acts as though it unpremeditatedly "recognises" itself in objects that bear an imaginary correspondence [[paranoiac]] [[delusions]] is what leads [[Lacan]] to that ideal. Basicallydescribe all [[knowledge]] (''[[connaissance]]''), the imaginary is the scene in which the ego undertakes the perpetual both [[neurosis]] and paradoxical practice of seeking "wholeness[[psychosis]], synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarityas " through identification with external objects. Each such identification is necessarily illusory, however, as it is but a pale imitation of the originary wholeness that was sacrificed in the primal identification of the ego with its specular image in the mirror stage[[knowledge|paranoiac knowledge]]."
There ===Ignorance===''[[Méconnaissance]]'' is, then, no room in Lacanian psychoanalysis for a conception of the self as some essential feature of one’s identity to which one must be truedistinguished from [[knowledge|ignorance]], which is one must "find," and above all which one must know.14 The "self" as traditionally conceived is but a monumentalisation of the illusory ego; indeed, Lacan goes so far as to state that this notion of a coherent "self" or ego is in fact a sign of pathology: "The ego is structured exactly like a symptom[[three]] [[affect|passions]]. At the heart of the subject, it Whereas [[knowledge|ignorance]] is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man."<ref>Lacan S1 62, qtd. in Evans 51</ref> Part of Lacan’s reaction against [[affect|passion]] for the line [[absence]] of philosophical thought that descends directly from Descartes[[knowledge]], the abandonment of the self or ego as the primary category of individual being ''[[méconnaissance]]'' is one with his insistence on the illusory nature of the an [[imaginary order and his allegiance to the supremacy ]] [[misrecognition]] of the a [[symbolic order: "Lacan sets out to inhabit the linguistic dimension ]] [[knowledge]] (''[[savoir]]'') that the Cartesian cogito failed to acknowledge. The [[subject is irremediably split in and by language, but ‘modern man’ still has not learned this lesson."<ref>Bowie 77</ref> Picking up where Freud left off, Lacan proposes to make this lesson inescapable]] does possess somewhere.
==More==<blockquote>Misrecognition is not [[ignorance]]. Misrecognition represents a certain organization of affirmations and negations, to which the subject is attached. Hence it cannot be conceived without correlate knowledge... There must surely be, behind his misrecognition, a kind of knowledge of what there is to misrecognize.<ref>{{S1}} p.167</ref></blockquote>
<i>==Ego Formation==Again, this applies both in the ordinary [[construction]] of the [[Méconnaissanceego]]</i> is a French word which I am obliged to use because there is no equivalent and in [[Englishparanoia]]. <i>In the former [[case]], the [[ego]] is basically a [[Méconnaissance|misrecognition]]of the [[symbolic]</i> precisely implies ] determinants of [[subjectivity]] (the [[discourse]] of the [[Other]], the [[unconscious]]). In the latter case, [[paranoiac]] [[delusions]] always imply a [[subjectMéconnaissance|recognition]] in its (''[[meaningMéconnaissance|reconnaissance]]; and I was also advised that it ''), as is not so easy to talk about the "evident in [[subjectMéconnaissance|systematic misunderstanding]]" before an (''méconnaissance systématique''), where it must clearly be admitted that that which is denied is in some way [[EnglishMéconnaissance|recognized]]-speaking audience(''reconnu'').<ref>{{Ec}} p.165</ref>
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Alienation]]
* [[Being]]
* [[Delusion]]
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* [[Ego]]
* [[Imaginary]]
* [[Knowledge]]
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* [[Mirror stage]]
* [[Neurosis]]
* [[Other]]
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* [[Paranoia]]
* [[Subject]]
* [[Symbolic]]
{{Also}}
==References==
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