Mirror Stage Imaginary Symbolic Real Lacan Mirror Stage Imaginary Symbolic Real

Mirror Stage Self-Presence Historical moment Conceptual transformation of psychic life Represents a regressive concept: a moment, and condition, to which we want to return. Exists then as a point of rupture: introduction of self-difference as the basic condition of psychic life.

Imaginary Ideal-I phase: full self-presence Disrupted by castration anxiety Father’s prohibition: disrupts the psychic life of the imaginary Paternal Prohibition: Law of the Father, Name of the Father Threat of fragmentation of the body accompanied by imposition of the law Infant/Child leaves the Imaginary for the Symbolic

Symbolic Structured as a language: symbolic order designates identity to be a form of signification Subjectivity/Ego: signifier on some signified concept in the Symbolic realm. We are little more than a sign, an identity premised on some place within a signifying chain, determined by where we end up after leaving the Imaginary.

Symbolic Order As a sign, ego therefore subjected to the play of difference, of self-difference, ala Derrida. Ego/Identity always incompletely realized, never achieves the fullness of Imaginary self-presence. Dependence on language as psychic life keeps us from recovering fullness of psychic life in the imaginary.

The Real Most “nebulous” of the three arenas of psychic life in Lacan. Language, signifying properties, our only way to represent the Real. Because of differance of language: we can never represent the Real; we can only represent a signification of it. The Real always returns us to our lack of self-presence.