Talk:Imaginary

Dictionary

In the work of Jacques Lacan, the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary are a central set of references. The imaginary is the field of the ego.

In his 1936 essay "Au-delà du 'principe de réalité"' (Beyond the reality principle), Lacan noted that Freud discovered a meaning in patients' complaints that other physicians considered imaginary and thus illusory. In his first reading of Freud's work, Lacan emphasized the notion of the image by highlighting its function: reflecting the subject's discrete behaviors in unified images. In the mirror stage, the subject identifies with these images and develops an ego concept in relation to another.

In his first seminar, Lacan acknowledged that such identification implies a radical alienation (1988a), but he considered this identification to be essential to the structure of the imaginary order and to the development of the human ego. At that time (1953-1954), he was interested in the ethological work of Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, which privileged the function of the image as gestalt in the development of the sexual instinct. Lacan believed that the development of the sexual drive of humans too is related to the imaginary function. This would account for the lure of images. As an example, he referred to the female stickleback, a fish whose copulatory dance is set in motion by the sight of a certain color patch on the male's back. Yet a paper cutout bearing the same markings can have the same effect on the female (Lacan, 1988a, pp. 122-123). What matters is that image is invested with libido. Lacan referred to libidinal investment as "what makes an object become desirable, that is to say, how it becomes confused with this more or less structured image which, in diverse ways, we carry with us" (1988a, p. 141).

But for the subject to come into being, one must find "a guide beyond the imaginary, on the level of the symbolic plane. . . . This guide governing the subject is the ego-ideal" (1988a, p. 141). The ego-ideal, according to Lacan, is the Other (caregiver) speaking. From that point on, the symbolic order (language) dominates over the imaginary order, which is reduced to being a decoy. It took Lacan twenty years to restore the imaginary to its full place alongside the real and the symbolic, which he did within the topic of the Borromean knot (a set of three interlinked rings that come apart if any one is removed).

In spite of Lacan's focus, in 1982, on the importance of knotting the three consistencies (the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary), many Lacanians continue to neglect the imaginary. In his study of James Joyce (2001), however, Lacan showed the difficulties that follow from a failure to give proper place to the imaginary. According to Marie-Christine Laznik-Penot (1995), the treatment of autism also allows us to see the difficulties that can follow from failure to accord the imaginary order its proper place.

Definition

The imaginary is the realm of unarticulated (but articulable) identifications and idealisations which are the building blocks of fantasy and ego; it is the most basic level of self-conception, the precursor to subjectivity. The chief difference between the real and the imaginary is that the imaginary is available to symbolisation. The difficulty with discussing the imaginary is that once it has been symbolised it ceases to be imaginary7; though the content remains the same, a formal metamorphosis takes place such that the new incarnation is never quite adequate to its fantastic precursor. It is in this sense that "the imaginary is always already structured by the symbolic order" (Evans 82-83) – as soon as it is articulated, elevated into consciousness, it is subject to the structuring imperative of the symbolic order.

This dual nature of the imaginary, its fundamental incompatibility with symbolisation despite its vulnerability to being symbolised, points to its status as the middle ground between the real and the symbolic, both in terms of the individual’s development as an infant and in terms of the topology of subjectivity as depicted in the Borromean knot. Generated by the individual’s developmental experience of the mirror stage (about which I will have more to say shortly), the imaginary order is the domain of the ego, a realm of identifications (i.e. spurious but necessary) with objects in the world by which the individual ceaselessly attempts to shore up his or her identity. This ongoing process of identification is the result of the trauma of the mirror stage, during which the infants’ primary narcissism (or inability to differentiate between himself or herself and any external entity or object) is fractured. The result is the ability to perceive the differences between self and other (which amounts to the advent of the self), inaugurating the lifelong quest to return to the pre-imaginary stage of primary narcissism during which there was no differentiation between self and other.8 In pursuit of this impossible goal the individual develops fantasised identifications that reassure him or her by imaginatively reducing difference to identification, producing in the process an imago or ideal ego, the vision of him or herself which he or she takes to be the essence of identity.

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The fundamental narcissism by which the human subject creates fantasy images of both himself and his ideal object of desire, according to Lacan. The imaginary order is closely tied to Lacan's theorization of the mirror stage. What must be remembered is that for Lacan this imaginary realm continues to exert its influence throughout the life of the adult and is not merely superceded in the child's movement into the symbolic order. Indeed, the imaginary and the symbolic are, according to Lacan, inextricably intertwined and work in tension with the Real. See the Lacan module on the structure of the psyche.

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In Jacques Lacan's theory of psychic structures, the Imaginary refers to the non-linguistic aspect of the psyche, formulated during the Mirror Stage.

The Imaginary is the realm of spatial identification that begins with the mirror stage (see above), and is instrumental in the development of psychic agency. As discussed, it is here that the emerging subject is able to identify his or her mirror image as 'self', as distinguished from 'other'. However, this process entails a certain structural alienation in that what is designated as 'self' is formed through what is Other – namely, the mirror image. What becomes the Subject proper is made through inception into the Symbolic order, which is when the infant acquires the ability to use language – that is, to realise his or her desire through speech.

See Also

• Psychosis
• Demand
• Desire of the subject
• Ethology and psychoanalysis
• Formula of Fantasy
• Fort-Da
• Frustration
• Graph of Desire
• I
• Identificatory project
• Imaginary identification
• Symbolic identification
• Imago
• Knot
• Law of the father
• Matheme
• Mirror stage
• Object a
• Optical schema
• Other
• Phallus
• Privation
• Real
• Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic father
• Schizophrenia
• Self-image
• Signifier
• Structuralism and psychoanalysis
• Subject
• Castration
• Symbolic
• Symptom
• Sinthome
• Topology

References

1. Lacan, Jacques. (1936). Au-delà du "principe de réalité." In his Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966, 73-92.
2. ——. (1982). The seminar XXII of 21 January 1975: RSI. In Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (Eds.), Feminine sexuality. New York: W. W. Norton.
3. ——. (1988a). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 1: Freud's papers on technique (1953-1954) (John Forrester, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
4. ——. (1988b). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 2: The ego in Freud's theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis (1954-1955) (Sylvana Tomaselli, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
5. ——. (2001). Joyce: le symptôme. In his Autres écrits. Paris: Seuil.

Kid A In Alphabet Land

Kid A In Alphabet Land Incinerates Another Insufferable Irritant - The Insouciant Imaginary!

"You're Imaginary!" Said Kid A. "This Is Easy...All Too Easy..." The Kid Thought, "Is It Only A Matter Of Time Before They See Through My Thin Veneer?..." Remember: Not Fraud, but Freud!