Lit Theory - Lacan

Jacques Lacan

1.     “The Mirror Stage as formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.”

a.     Children can identify their reflection in a mirror at a young age.

                                               i.     Ideal I – The ability to recognize the self and symbols prior to the development of language within the child.

1.     It’s the source of secondary identifications or the base functions of desires.

2.     It establishes the ego before social stimuli and thought can affect it.

3.     The reflection is viewed more as an idea than a material thing.

4.     The reflection appears to in-between the material visible world and the world of dream and ideas.

                                             ii.     The function of the mirror state is to develop the relationship between the inner world of the child’s mind and the outer world of things and objects.

                                            iii.     The mirror state is precipitates from its inability to anticipate.

1.     It creates fragmented fantasies that are shaped by the ego.

2.     The mirror stage manifests primarily in dreams.

3.     Some references can be identified.

4.     Some references are present but have little context and are difficult to interpret.

2.     “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious”

a.     Lacan suggests the unconscious needs to be rethought.

b.     Language is unique to man in that it exists prior to the individual entering its domain.

c.     There are three conceptions of the human condition.

                                               i.     Nature

                                             ii.     Society, and

                                            iii.     Culture – culture being reduced to language.

d.     Traditional thought on signs.

                                               i.     S/s, signifier or signified, or the form a symbol takes over the meaning it implies.

                                             ii.     The bar implies resistance to understanding the meaning of the sign.

                                            iii.     Understanding is built on itself through repetition.

e.     Our experience runs counter to this linear approach to sign interpretation.

                                               i.     Linearity is only relevant at the time of signification, but doesn’t speak to multiple cycles and meanings of interpretations.

                                             ii.     All interpretations of meaning of multiple levels of meaning and can mean something it isn’t obviously representing.

1.     Metonymy – The identification of a thing by describing something it is close it.   Saying “White House” as a way to reference the presidency and their administration.

2.     Metaphor – An analogy saying one thing is another thing.  

f.      Lacan suggests the sign equation should read F(S) I/s.  Or, the function of the signifier is the inverse of the signified.   The signifier, or the symbol, is the object that creates the metaphorical or metonymy understanding.

g.     Note. Does this mean writers use a form of reverse engineering to create the symbols needed to form the desired meaning in the reader’s mind.

Works Cited

  Lacan, Jacques. “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious.”  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  1169-1181. Print.