JACQUES LACAN: LINGUISTIC THEORY KEY CONCEPTS

Stages of Psychosexual Development

Lacan introduced the concept of the three stages that correspond to three stages of development

NAME-OF-THE-FATHER (Lacan): The laws and restrictions that control both your desire and the rules of communication CASTRATION COMPLEX: The early childhood fear of castration that Freud and Lacan both saw as an integral part of our psychosexual development. Its associated with restrictions, prohibition and fear. OEDIPUS COMPLEX (Lacan): being made to recognize that we cannot sleep with or even fully "have" our mother

*0-6 months beginning of socialization (a first step away from the Real) (naming body parts, boundaries and separation) *6-18 months recognition of the self's image precedes the entrance into language, after which the subject can understand the place of that image of the self within a larger social order. Creation of an ideal version of the self gives pre-verbal impetus to the creation of narcissistic phantasies in the fully developed subject. *18-4 years old By acquiring language, you entered into what Lacan terms the symbolic order"; you were reduced into an empty signifier ("I") within the field of the Other, which is to say, within a field of language The Law of the father is in this way theorized by Lacan as the necessary mediator between the child and the mother. Child's socialization is its aspiration to be the fully satisfying object for the mother, a function which is finally (or at least normally) fulfilled by the Law-bearing words of the father.

Lacan and Feminism

Language: a radical break from any sense of materiality Reality vs Real Reality: fantasy world constructed through language Real: a materiality of existence beyond language and thus beyond expressibility PHALLOCENTRISM OR PHALLOGOCENTRISM: The privileging of the masculine (the phallus) in understanding meaning or social relations.

Women socialize differently because they dont experience Castration complex and Oedipus complex The process of moving through the Oedipus complex is a way of recognizing the need to obey social strictures and to follow a closed differential system of language in which we understand "self" in relation to "others. Males give up the link to Real (deny their sexuality) in order to enter into the social world (Law-of-the-Father) Women, therefore, are more lacking and more full.

Tension between Real and Reality / Symbolic constitute psyche

maintaining the sexist tradition in psychoanalysis provides a useful means of understanding gender biases and imposed roles opening up new possibilities for feminist theory

Citation: Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Kristeva: On Psychosexual Development." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. January 2012. Purdue U. June 30, 2012. <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/kristevadevelop.html>.

Entrance into Symbolic Order is associated with rules and limitations of social world-Law of the Father.

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Pan Pil 19 - 12-13 - Group 4

Evaluation of Lacanian Theory by Feminists

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Pan Pil 19 - 12-13 - Group 4