Lacan: The Mirror Stage

CriticaLink | Lacan: The Mirror Stage | Terms ● Baldwin, James

Mark
subject ● Bosch,
Hieronymus
A basic distinction in philosophy is the ● Bühler, Charlotte
difference between subject and object. We ● Caillois, Roger
Overview
recognize this distinction in our terms ● Freud, Anna
"objective" (dealing strictly with the Hegel, G.W.F.
Guide ●
knowledge derived from our observation)
● Köhler, Wolfgang
and "subjective" (reacting in a manner
Terms based on emotions and attitudes of an ● Lévi-Strauss,
individual). In psychoanalytic theory, the Claude
Lives term "subject" refers to the sum of the ● Wallon, Henri
physiological and psychological operations
Times that sustain a human individual as a ● Aha-Erlebnis
"person". The human subject has both ● anxiety
Questions mental and bodily dimensions. ● captation
● Cogito
Resources Psychoanalysis is critical of the Cartesian ● defenses of the ego
vision of the subject as a centered,
autonomous "I" whose self-awareness can ● fragmented body
be taken as a foundation for philosophical ● Gestalt
inquiry. For psychoanalytic theorists like ● Ideal-I
Freud and Lacan, the subject's autonomy ● identification
and self-awareness is constantly ● imago
undermined by impulses from the id and ● Innenwelt
steered by the pressures of the superego. ● legendary
In this sense, "individual" is an inaccurate psychasthenia
synonmym for "subject" because the ● libido
Freudian model of the subject is divided
● méconnaissance
into at least three conflicting parts.
● mirror stage
● neurosis
A good way to understand the differences
between theoretical approaches is to ● object
examine what they emphasize in (and ● obsession
leave out of) their accounts of the human ● other
subject. Feminism, for example, may pay ● Oedipus complex
particular attention to the body as a site of ● perception
cultural impositions based on gender consciousness
norms; Marxism may focus on the subject system
as a source of productive (and exploitable)
● phobia
labor and as itself the product of ideological
conditoning. ● primary narcissism
● psychosis
● subject

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Lacan: The Mirror Stage

● transitivism
● Umwelt
● Verneinung

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