STRUCTURALIST PSYCHOANALYSIS: DEFINITIONS
Structuralist (Lacanian) Psychoanalysis refers to a school of psychoanalysis, founded by Jacques Lacan, which seeks to combine Freudian Psychoanalysis with the insights of Saussure into the nature of signification.
Desire:
Foreclusion:
Gaze:
The Imaginary: this refers to the realm primarily of the visual, the sensory medium through which the infant first encounters and apprehends the world around it and will continue to do so for the rest of its life. The basis of the Imaginary Order is the formation of the ego in the 'mirror stage.' Since the ego is formed by identifying with the counterpart or specular image, 'identification' is an important aspect of the imaginary. The relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification is a locus of 'alienation,' which is another feature of the imaginary, and is fundamentally narcissistic.
Jouissance:
Lack:
Mirror Stage: Initially, Lacan considered the mirror stage as a crucial moment in the cognitve development of the infant but later came to think of it as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, the paradigm of the Imaginary order: it is a phase in which the subject is permanently caught and captivated by his own image. The mirror stage describes the formation of the Ego via the process of identification, the Ego being the result of identifying with one's own specular image. At six months the baby still lacks coordination, however, he can recognize himself in the mirror before attaining control over his bodily movements. He sees his image as a whole, and the synthesis of this image produces a sense of contrast with the uncoordination of the body, which is perceived as a fragmented body. This contrast is first felt by the infant as a rivalry with his own image, because the wholeness of the image threatens him with fragmentation, and thus the mirror stage gives rise to an aggressive tension between the subject and the image. To resolve this aggressive tension, the subject identifies with the image: this primary identification with the counterpart is what forms the Ego. The moment of identification is to Lacan a moment of jubilation since it leads to an imaginary sense of mastery. Yet, the jubilation may also be accompanied by a depressive reaction, when the infant compares his own precarious sense of mastery with the omnipotence of the mother. This identification also involves the ideal ego which functions as a promise of future wholeness sustaining the Ego in anticipation. The mirror stage shows that the Ego is the product of misunderstanding - Lacan's term 'méconnaissance' implies a false recognition - and the place where the subject becomes alienated from himself: the process by which the ego is formed in the Mirror Stage is at the same time the institution of alienation from the symbolic determination of being. In this sense méconnaissance is an imaginary misrecognition of a symbolic knowledge that the subject possesses somewhere.
Name of the Father (French Nom du père) is a concept that Lacan fully developed starting in his seminar The Psychoses (1955-1956). Lacan plays with the homophony of le nom du père (the name of the father) and le non du père (the no of the father), to emphasize the legislative and prohibitive function of the symbolic father.
Phallus:
Objet Petit A ('object little a') stands for the unattainable object of desire.
The Real: this refers to the brute reality which exists prior to any attempt by humans to impose significance on things.
The Symbolic: this refers to the realm of the semiotic, and not just the linguistic per se, into which the child comes to be inserted and through which it is introduced to an order of meaningfulness (a system of binary opposites) that assigns values to things (e.g. good versus bad) and particular roles to subjects (e.g. father versus mother). The paradigmatic instance of this insertion is the acquisition by the child of language through which the child is introduced to the symbolic ordering of things.
