Other

other/Other (autre/Autre) The 'other' is perhaps the most complex term in Lacan's work. When Lacan first begins to use the term, in the 1930s, it is not very salient, and refers simply to 'other people'. Although Freud does use the term 'other', speaking of both der Andere (the other person) and das Andere (otherness), Lacan seems to have borrowed the term from Hegel, to whose work Lacan was introduced in a series of lectures given by Alexandre KojËve at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in 1933-9 (see KojËve, 1947). In 1955 Lacan draws a distinction between 'the little other' ('the other') and 'the big Other' ('the Other') (S2, ch. 19), a distinction which remains central throughout the rest of his work. Thereafter, in Lacanian algebra, the big Other is designated A (upper case, for French Autre) and the little other is designated a (lower case italicised, for French autre). Lacan asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: the analyst must be 'thoroughly imbued' with the difference between A and a (E, 140), so that he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not of the other (Ec, 454). 1. The little other is the other who is not Really other, but a reflection and projection of the EGo (which is why the symbol a can represent the little other and the ego interchangeably in SCHEMA L). He is simultaneously the Counterpart and the SPECULAR IMAGE. The little other is thus entirely inscribed in the Imaginary order. For a more detailed discussion of the development of the symbol a in Lacan's work, see oBJETPETITA. 2. The big Other designates radical alterity, an other-ness which transcends the illusory otherness of the Imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan equates this radical alterity with language and the law, and hence the big Other is inscribed in the order of the Symbolic. Indeed, the big Other is the Symbolic insofar as it is particularised for each subject. The Other is thus both another subject, in his radical alterity and unassimilable uniqueness, and also the Symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject. However, the meaning of 'the Other as another subject' is strictly secondary to the meaning of 'the Other as Symbolic order'; 'the Other must first of all be considered a locus, the locus in which speech is constituted' (S3, 274). It is thus only possible to speak of the Other as a subject in a secondary sense, in the sense that a subject may occupy this position and thereby 'embody' the Other for another subject (S8, 202). In arguing that speech originates not in the ego, nor even in the subject, but in the Other, Lacan is stressing that speech and language are beyond one's conscious control; they come from another place, outside consciousness, and hence 'the unconscious is the discourse of the Other' (Ec, 16). In conceiving of the Other as a place, Lacan alludes to Freud's concept of psychical locality, in which the unconscious is described as 'the other scene (see SCENE). It is the mother who first occupies the position of the big Other for the child, because it is she who receives the child's primitive cries and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message (see PUNCTUATION). The Castration Complex is formed when the child discovers that this Other is not complete, that there is a LACK in the Other. In other words, there is always a signifier missing from the treasury of signifiers constituted by the Other. The mythical complete Other (written A in Lacanian algebra) does not exist. In 1957 Lacan illustrates this incomplete Other graphically by striking a BAR through the symbol A, to produce A; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete Other is the barred Other. The Other is also 'the Other sex' (S20, 40). The Other sex is always Woman, for both male and female subjects; 'Man here acts as the relay whereby the Woman becomes this Other for herself as she is this Other for him' (Ec, 732).

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In contrast to the dominant Anglo-American ego-psychologists of his time, Lacan considered the self as something constituted in the "Other", that is, the conception of the external. Lacan argues that the psychoanalytic movement towards understanding the ego as a coherent force with dominion over a person's psyche was rooted in a misunderstanding of Freud. In Lacan's view, the self remained in eternal internal conflict and that only extensive self-deceit made the situation bearable.

His developmental theory of the objectified self was inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure's insights into the relationship of the signifier and the signified - the role of language and reference in thought were central to his formulations, particularly the Symbolic.

Kid A In Alphabet Land

Kid A In Alphabet Land Obliterates Another Obstinate Opponent - The Obnoxious Other!

You're Not My Brother - You're Another, Like Any Other! You Had Better Take Cover, 'Cuz If I Have My Druthers, You I Will Smother! - After I Take You As