Jacques Lacan

1. Terms & Major Concepts

2. Mirror Stage, the Unconscious and
the Phallus
 L’s language
Complicated syntax; p. 1303
Meanings: allusive (to Freud, as well as the
other texts and his contemporaries), poetic and
paradoxical.
“In other words—for the moment, I am not
fucking, I am talking to you. Well, I can have
exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking.
That’s what it means. Indeed, it raises the
question of whether in fact I am not fucking at
this moment. (Lacan The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis.165-66.)
 Major Concepts
1. Identity is split; desire a lack.
(split: e.g. self and mirror image; self and
(m)other; need and demand; ideal ego and
ego ideal, speaking and spoken subject)
2. Against Cartesianism (rational consciousness)
and humanism (free will). “Unconscious is the
language of the Other.” Language speaks us. I
think where I am not.”
– A child’s sexual development (“The Mirror Stage”)
– The unconscious structured like language (The
Agency of the Letter”)
– Sexual relationship (Signification of the Phallus)
 Questions
1. Do you agree that our identity is fragmentary and
why? 
2. What are your examples of mirror image, as it is
related to identity?
3. Do you agree with Lacan that both our desire and
demand (for love) are insatiable?  That there is always
an otherness to it which cannot be represented in
language?
4. Which of the following do you agree with?  "I think,
therefore, I am," "Where I think, there I am," or "I think
where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think." 
5. What is phallus to Lacan? Do you agree our desire
centers around “being” or “having” phallus?
 Key terms

The three orders of human existence;  the

mirror stage
The three kinds of “want” Schema L:
1)de-centered subject with intra-psychic conflicts;
2) A child’s development in relation to the other
and the Other.  the Phallus
Lacan’s algorithms of the unconscious
 The orders of human existence:
the Imaginary, the Symbolic & the Real
The Real – ‘pure plenitude’; cannot be talked
about.
The imaginary – where “human self comes into
being through a fundamentally aesthetic
recognition” (text 1281); with an identificatory
image of its own stability and permanence;
The Symbolic -- language
 The Mirror Stage

The baby (with its fragmentary sense of

self) identifies with an external image (of
the body in the mirror or through the
mother or primary caregiver)  have a
sense of self (ideal ego).
Split: experiences fragmentation; sees
wholeness.
 Effects of the three orders:
Need, Demand, and Desire (1)
A child develops from need to demand and desire.// its
movement from the Real, to the Imaginary and Symbolic.

the Real the Imaginary The Symbolic

need demand desire
Need – requirements for brutal survival.
(biological need)  absence of the mother  the baby’s
social, imaginary and linguistic functions evolve.
 Effects of the three orders:
Need, Demand, and Desire (2)
Demand: need formulated in language.
-- Demand has two objects: one spoken, the other
unspoken.
--insatiable, the result of the ego’s self-idealization.
-- always addresses an other; consciously demands
concrete, particular objects. p. 63
-- verbalization of imaginary subject-object, self-other
relations. 66 (Grosz pp. 59 - 67)
-- “Signification of the Phallus” demand for love 1307
 Effects of the three orders:
Need, Demand, and Desire (3)
Desire: primally repressed wishes reappear in and
as unconscious desire.
--marks the child’s entry into the domain of the
Other—the domain of law and language.
-- insatiable; characterized by lack (of object).

(Grosz pp. 59 - 67)

 The self, the other, the Other
(Lacan’s Schema L)
Id the other
(man in the realm of ‘the Real’) (e.g. mother, mirror image)

The Mirror on Th
i
Stage e la t e un
a r yr con
n sci
a gi ou
Im s

Ego the Other

 the Other

The Other enters the oedipal triangle as a point

outside the dual imaginary structure. As the law
of symbolic functioning, the Other is embodied in
the figure of the symbolic father. (G 74)
Its major signifier: the phallus
. . . stands for language and the
conventions of social life organized
under the category of the law. (source)
 The Other: related ideas
The other as a place --
the other is thus the place where is constituted the
one which speaks with the one who listens.
There is otherness of the other that corresponds to
the S, that is, the big Other, the subject who is
unknown to us, The Other who is symbolic by
nature.
The unconscious is the discourse of the other.
 “The Signification of the Phallus”

I. Intro.
Start with a question about Freud’s idea of
castration complex p. 1303;
(Refuting the criticisms)
Introduce the linguistic notion of signifier and
signified 1305  rediscover “the laws that
govern the other scene” of the unconscious
1306
 “The Signification of the Phallus”

II. Phallus and its effects

--defined p. 1306
--effects (need  demand  desire)1306-1308
-- phallus as Aufhebung 取代昇存
III. Sexual relations as determined by the phallus
1309
 Lacan’s algorithms of the
unconscious
Algorithmic representations of the metaphoric
and the metonymic processes in the
unconscious.
S/s : / = the barrier between the conscious
and the unconscious, which resists being
represented; / = the phallus.
I
f(S) s
 Lacan’s views of S/s

not one-to-one static correspondence between

language and social realities p. 1291
Pp. 1293 no signification can be sustained other
than by reference to another signification.
the restroom signs as an example 1294 –
– Language as structure more than representation
– signified- not mental concepts, but social meanings
= signifiers
Sliding signfiers p. 1295 – 96
Signifier and signified
the image of twin doors symbolizing,
through the solitary confinement
offered Western Man for the
satisfaction of his natural needs away
from home, the imperative that he
seems to share with the great
majority of primitive communities by
which his public life is subjected to
the laws of urinary segregation.
 Signifying chain

P. 1297
Tree as an example
Metonymy: eg. Thirty sails; word-to-word
connexion
Metaphor: e.g. sheaf
In this movement from one term to another
(substition), Lacan will recognize the movement
of desire.
 Metonymy: F (S. . . S) = S (-) S

Sliding of the signifier over the signified.

(S. . . S): two contiguous signfiers; metonymy;
= a relation of congruence
(-) : maintenance of the bar
Can be expanded into
S. . . S1 S S
s S s
 Example for analysis

“Snowed Up”
The Law of the father;
Eddie’s desire
The change in the role of Thrigg from pursuer to
caretaker
 Example for analysis (2)

The Piano
The function of the piano key
 Reference

Elizabeth Grosz Jacque Lacan: A Feminist

Introduction
The Other (with a big O)
http://www.mii.kurume-
u.ac.jp/~leuers/Lacother.htm
Text:
http://www.anotherscene.com/japanpm/agency1.
html