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" (Evans 109). 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 illusions of identification produced in the imaginary, "those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity" (Evans 82) thus turn out to be "surface appearances which are deceptive, observable phenomena which hide underlying structure" (Evans 82).12{{Bottom}}
This process of méconnaissance===Translation===Translator, originally conceived of by Lacan as merely a stopping point on the path of psychic development (in his work from 1936-1949)Alan [[Sheridan]], 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) (Evans 115)French [[word]]. The "stade" [[sense]] is of the original French formulation "stade du miroira " 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 . The [[concept]] is central to [[Lacan]]'s [[thinking]], since, for him, [[knowledge]] (Evans 115''conaissance''). In this expanded conceptualization of the lasting effects of the mirror stage as the inaugurating moment of the imaginary order, the original méconnaissance that engenders the ego 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 [[French]] term ''[[méconnaissance]]'' corresponds roughly to the mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation – [[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 development. term ''[[connaissance]]'' (Ecrits 4"[[knowledge]]").
The erstwhile transformative stage of ego development thus becomes an enduring psychic structure which constitutes ===Neurotic Self-Knowledge===Thus, in the unsymbolised interiority of "identity." Coeval [[imaginary]] [[order]], [[knowledge|self-knowledge]] (''me-connaissance'') is synonymous with the ego[[méconnaissance|misunderstanding]] (''[[méconnaissance]]''), because the imaginary thus persists as [[process]] by which the ground on which it thrives, holding its own against [[ego]] is formed in the violent encroachments of [[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 the imaginary field created around Jacques Lacan|Some Reflections on the objectEgo]], identifies with it" ''Int. J. [[Psycho]]-[[Anal]].'', and seeks to possess it as a concrete way of declaring his or her identityvol. 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 is34, representation in language, rather than merely by associations of images), they nonetheless persist as powerful determinants of individual ego-formations and behaviour patterns1953 [1951b]. p.13 In more theoretical terms,12</ref>
===Paranoiac Knowledge===This [[structural]] homology between the original identificatory procedures which brought ordinary [[constitution]] of the [[ego into being ]] and [[paranoiac]] [[i.e. the mirror stagedelusions]] 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 what leads [[Lacan]] to be describe all [[knowledge]] (''[[connaissance]]''), in both [[neurosis]] and to remain ‘what one is’ by gathering to oneself ever more instances of sameness[[psychosis]], resemblance and self-replication; it is the birthplace of the narcissistic ‘ideal egoas "[[knowledge|paranoiac knowledge]].’ (Bowie 92)"
The circularity and self-referentiality of this process ===Ignorance===''[[Méconnaissance]]'' is abundantly clear in Bowie’s articulationto be distinguished from [[knowledge|ignorance]], as the ego both constructs an ideal version which is one 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 to that ideal[[three]] [[affect|passions]]. Basically, the imaginary Whereas [[knowledge|ignorance]] is a [[affect|passion]] for the scene in which the ego undertakes the perpetual and paradoxical practice [[absence]] of seeking "wholeness, synthesis, autonomy[[knowledge]], duality and, above all, similarity" through identification with external objects. Each such identification ''[[méconnaissance]]'' is necessarily illusory, however, as it is but an [[imaginary]] [[misrecognition]] of a pale imitation of the originary wholeness [[symbolic]] [[knowledge]] (''[[savoir]]'') that was sacrificed in the primal identification of the ego with its specular image in the mirror stage[[subject]] does possess somewhere.
There <blockquote>Misrecognition is, then, no room in Lacanian psychoanalysis for not [[ignorance]]. Misrecognition represents a conception certain organization of the self as some essential feature of one’s identity affirmations and negations, to which one the subject is attached. Hence it cannot be conceived without correlate knowledge... There must surely be true, which one must "findbehind his misrecognition," and above all which one must know.14 The "self" as traditionally conceived is but a monumentalisation kind of knowledge of the illusory ego; indeedwhat there is to misrecognize.<ref>{{S1}} p.167</ref></blockquote> ==Ego Formation==Again, Lacan goes so far as to state that this notion applies both in the ordinary [[construction]] of a coherent "self" or the [[ego is ]] and in fact a sign of pathology: "The [[paranoia]]. In the former [[case]], the [[ego ]] is structured exactly like basically a symptom. At [[Méconnaissance|misrecognition]] of the heart [[symbolic]] determinants of [[subjectivity]] (the subject, it is only a privileged symptom, [[discourse]] of the human symptom par excellence[[Other]], the mental illness of man" (Lacan S1 62, qtd. in Evans 51[[unconscious]]). Part of Lacan’s reaction against In the line of philosophical thought that descends directly from Descarteslatter case, [[paranoiac]] [[delusions]] always imply a [[Méconnaissance|recognition]] (''[[Méconnaissance|reconnaissance]]''), the abandonment of the self or ego as the primary category of individual being is one with his insistence on the illusory nature of the imaginary order and his allegiance to the supremacy of the symbolic order: "Lacan sets out to inhabit the linguistic dimension evident in [[Méconnaissance|systematic misunderstanding]] (''méconnaissance systématique''), where it must clearly be admitted that that the Cartesian cogito failed to acknowledge. The subject which is denied is irremediably split in and by language, but ‘modern man’ still has not learned this lesson" some way [[Méconnaissance|recognized]] (Bowie 77''reconnu''). Picking up where Freud left off, <ref>{{Ec}} p.165</ref> ==See Also=={{See}}* [[Alienation]]* [[Being]]* [[Delusion]]||* [[Ego]]* [[Imaginary]]* [[Knowledge]]||* [[Mirror stage]]* [[Neurosis]]* [[Other]]||* [[Paranoia]]* [[Subject]]* [[Symbolic]]{{Also}} ==References==<div style="font-size:11px" class="references-small"><references/></div> [[Category:Psychoanalysis]][[Category:Jacques Lacan proposes to make this lesson inescapable.]][[Category:Dictionary]][[Category:Imaginary]][[Category:Concepts]][[Category:Terms]]{{OK}} __NOTOC__
