THE
PSYCHE CAN
BE DIVIDED into
three major structures that control our lives and our desires. Most
of Lacan's many terms for the full complexity of the psyche's workings
can be related to these three major concepts, which correlate roughly
to the three main moments in the individual's development, as outlined
in the Lacan module on psychosexual
development:
1) The
Real. This concept marks the state of nature from which we have
been forever severed by our entrance into language. Only as neo-natal
children were we close to this state of nature, a state in which there
is nothing but need. A baby needs and seeks to satisfy those needs with
no sense for any separation between itself and the external world or
the world of others. For this reason, Lacan sometimes represents this
state of nature as a time of fullness or completeness that is subsequently
lost through the entrance into language. The primordial animal need
for copulation (for example, when animals are in heat) similarly corresponds
to this state of nature. There is a need followed by a search for satisfaction.
As far as humans are concerned, however, "the real is impossible,"
as Lacan was fond of saying. It is impossible in so far as we cannot
express it in language because the very entrance into language marks
our irrevocable separation from the real. Still, the real continues
to exert its influence throughout our adult lives since it is the rock
against which all our fantasies and linguistic structures ultimately
fail. The real for example continues to erupt whenever we are made to
acknowledge the materiality of our existence, an acknowledgement that
is usually perceived as traumatic (since it threatens our very "reality"),
although it also drives Lacan's sense of jouissance.
2) The Imaginary Order.
This concept corresponds to the mirror stage (see the
Lacan module on psychosexual development) and marks the movement
of the subject from primal need to what Lacan terms "demand."
As the connection to the mirror stage suggests, the "imaginary"
is primarily narcissistic even though it sets the stage for the fantasies
of desire. (For Lacan's understanding of desire, see the
next module.) Whereas needs can be fulfilled, demands are, by definition,
unsatisfiable; in other words, we are already making the movement into
the sort of lack that, for Lacan, defines the human subject. Once a
child begins to recognize that its body is separate from the world and
its mother, it begins to feel anxiety, which is caused by a sense of
something lost. The demand of the child, then, is to make the other
a part of itself, as it seemed to be in the child's now lost state of
nature (the neo-natal months). The child's demand is, therefore, impossible
to realize and functions, ultimately, as a reminder of loss and lack.
(The difference between "demand" and "desire," which
is the function of the symbolic order, is simply the acknowledgement
of language, law, and community in the latter; the demand of the imaginary
does not proceed beyond a dyadic relation between the self and the object
one wants to make a part of oneself.) The mirror stage corresponds to
this demand in so far as the child misrecognizes in its mirror image
a stable, coherent, whole self, which, however, does not correspond
to the real child (and is, therefore, impossible to realize). The image
is a fantasy, one that the child sets up in order to compensate for
its sense of lack or loss, what Lacan terms an "Ideal-I" or
"ideal ego." That fantasy image of oneself can be filled in
by others who we may want to emulate in our adult lives (role models,
et cetera), anyone that we set up as a mirror for ourselves in what
is, ultimately, a narcissistic
relationship. 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
(despite my suggestion of a straightforward chronology in
the last module). Indeed, the imaginary and the symbolic are, according
to Lacan, inextricably intertwined and work in tension with the Real.
3) The Symbolic Order (or
the "big Other"). Whereas the imaginary is all about
equations and identifications, the symbolic is about language and narrative.
Once a child enters into language and accepts the rules and dictates
of society, it is able to deal with others. The acceptance of language's
rules is aligned with the Oedipus complex, according to Lacan. The symbolic
is made possible because of your acceptance of the Name-of-the-Father,
those laws and restrictions that control both your desire and the rules
of communication: "It is in the name of the father that
we must recognize the support of the symbolic function which, from the
dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of the law"
(Écrits
67). Through recognition of the Name-of-the-Father, you are able
to enter into a community of others. The symbolic, through language,
is "the pact which links... subjects together in one action. The
human action par excellence is originally founded on the existence
of the world of the symbol, namely on laws and contracts" (Freud's
Papers
230).
Whereas the Real concerns need and the Imaginary
concerns demand, the symbolic is all about desire, according to Lacan.
(For more on desire, see the
next module.) Once we enter into language, our desire is forever
afterwards bound up with the play of language. We should keep in mind,
however, that the Real and the Imaginary continue to play a part in
the evolution of human desire within the symbolic order. The fact that
our fantasies always fail before the Real, for example, ensures that
we continue to desire; desire in the symbolic order could, in fact,
be said to be our way to avoid coming into full contact with the Real,
so that desire is ultimately most interested not in obtaining the object
of desire but, rather, in reproducing itself. The narcissism of the
Imaginary is also crucial for the establishment of desire, according
to Lacan: "The primary imaginary relation provides the fundamental
framework for all possible erotism. It is a condition to which the object
of Eros as such must be submitted. The object relation must always submit
to the narcissistic framework and be inscribed in it" (Freud's
Papers
174). For Lacan, love begins here; however, to make that love "functionally
realisable" (to make it move beyond scopophilic narcissism),
the subject must reinscribe that narcissistic
imaginary relation into the laws and contracts of the symbolic order:
"A creature needs some reference to the beyond of language, to
a pact, to a commitment which constitutes him, strictly speaking, as
an other, a reference included in the general or, to be more exact,
universal system of interhuman symbols. No love can be functionally
realisable in the human community, save by means of a specific pact,
which, whatever the form it takes, always tends to become isolated off
into a specific function, at one and the same time within language and
outside of it" (Freud's
Papers
174). The Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic thus work together
to create the tensions of our psychodynamic selves.