T P C B D: The Lacan Module On Psychosexual Development

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.
Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On the Structure of the

Psyche." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. (June 31, 2011). Purdue U.
April 23, 2012.
<http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/lacanstructure.html
>.

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THE

PSYCHE CAN BE DIVIDED into three major structures that

1) The Real. This concept marks the state of nature from which we

2) The Imaginary Order. This concept corresponds to the mirror

3) The Symbolic Order (or the "big Other"). Whereas the

Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On the Structure of the

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