Jacques Lacan Analysis

Jacques Lacan Analysis

In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan argues that the Symbolic order structures the visual field of the Imaginary, which means that it involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the foundation of the Symbolic, the signified and signification are part of the Imaginary order.

Mirror stage

- Initially, Lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months.

- By the early 1950s, Lacan's concept of the mirror stage had evolved: he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of 'Imaginary order'.

- As Lacan further develops the mirror stage concept, the stress falls less on its historical value and ever more on its structural value. "Historical value" refers to the mental development of the child and "structural value" to the libidinal relationship with the body image.

- It illustrates the conflictual nature of the dual relationship. The dual refers not only to the relation between the Ego and the body, which is always characterised by illusions of similarity and reciprocity, but also to the relation between the imaginary and the real. 

Lack Stage

- Jacques Lacan created the idea of the 'lack' and that it causes desires to arise.

- "Desire is a relation to being to lack. The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but the lack of being whereby the being exists."

- This is similar to the Freudian approach of ID acting on the hedonistic lifestyle whereas the Super ego acts on moral principles and what "lack: relates to is the Ego which is in between.

- From a Freudian approach, the "lack" of hedonistic features strive us to act on moral principles and vice versa.

The Three Lacks Stage

- Lacan distinguishes between three kinds of lack. According to the nature of the object which is lacking

- The first one is Symbolic Castration and its object related is the Imaginary Phallus 

- The second one is Imaginary Frustration and its object related is the Real Breast

- The third kind of lack is Real Privation and it's object related is the Symbolic Phallus

-  The three corresponding agents are the Real Father, the Symbolic Mother, and the imaginary Father. Of these three forms of lack, castration is the most important from the perspective of the cure.

"Lack" link to Freud

The symbolic version of the phallus, a phallic symbol is meant to represent male generative powers. According to Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, while male possess a penis, no one can possess the symbolic phallus. Jacques Lacan's Ecrits: A selection includes an essay titled the significance of the Phallus which articulates the difference between "being" and "having" the phallus. Men are positioned as men in so far as they are seen to have the phallus, are seen to "be" the phallus. Women, not having the phallus, are seen to "be" the phallus. The symbolic phallus is the concept of being the ultimate man, and having this is compared to having the divine gift of God.

Henri Wallon

- Lacan's concept of the mirror stage was so strongly inspired by earlier work by psychologist Henri Wallon, who speculated based on observations of animals and humans responding to their reflections in mirrors. Wallon noted that by the age of about six months, human infants typically become very interested and devote much time and effort to exploring the connections between their bodies and their images.

-This could be interpreted biblically as the bible notes that Human are dominant race and we were created in "god's image and likeliness" and we can appreciate the higher qualities whereas animals are 1 dimensional and only require the ability to survive and reproduce.

Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Jacques Lacan rereads Freud using the theoretical methodology developed by structuralism. He seeks to anchor psychoanalysis firmly in culture rather than biology. As he explains, he aim is to turn 'the meaning of Freud's work away from the biological basis he would have wished for it towards the cultural references with which it is shot through' (1989: 116). He takes Freud's developmental structure and articulates it through a critical reading of structuralism to produce a post-structuralist psychoanalysis. Lacan's account of the development of the human 'subject' has had an enormous influence on cultural studies, especially the study of film.

According to Lacan, we are born into a condition of 'lack', and subsequently spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome this condition. 'Lack' is experienced in different ways and as different things, but it is always a non-representable expression of the fundamental condition of being human. The result is an endless quest in search of an imagined moment of plentitude. Lacan figures this as a search for what he terms 'l'object petit a' (the object small other); that which is desired but forever out of reach; a lost object, signifying an imaginary moment in time. Unable to ever take hold of this object, we console ourselves with displacement strategies and substitute objects.

Lacan argues that we make a journey through three determining stages of development. The first is the 'mirror stage', the second is the 'fort-da' game, and the third is the 'Oedipus complex'. Our lives begin in the realm Lacan calls the Real. Here we simply are. In the Real we do not know where we end and were everything else begins. The Real is like Nature before symbolisation (i.e before cultural classification). It is both outside in what we might call 'objective reality' and inside in what Freud calls our Instinctual drives (The ID). The Real is everything before it became meditated by the Symbolic. 

The Mirror Phase and The Imaginary

For Lacan, we are born too soon. We can't walk, talk or see. We begin as broken people. At some point, however we encounter an image of ourselves in a mirror and begin to identify ourselves as a distinct person in the world, separate from others. The image seems to be better than us and is external to ourselves, so this identification is problematic in itself. This process is the Mirror Phase and it allows us to enter into the realm of the Imaginary - with the emphasis being on the idea of the image.

This Mirror Phase can act as a metaphor for what we do in the cinema - and this idea was developed by Christian Metz. We sit in the dark , quietly (Metz clearly doesn't go to your average multiplex), and don't move, whilst watching an image of a person who is much bigger, stronger, more intelligent, braver and more resourceful than ourselves. The mirror of the cinema screen doesn't reflect us back but shows whom we'd like to be. I'm no Brad Pitt, but I wouldn't mind being him(well aside from in Meet Joe Black(1998)).

Notes on film clip.

Life, lust, fantasy.

The second you get what you seek you don't want it, desire supports fantasy

only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Living by your wants will never make your happy. Not measure life by what you've obtained, rationality.

Never satisfied, always want more, always driven by desire of something.

A Passage from Andrew M. Butler's 'The Pocket Essential Film Studies' Book, refers to theory Lacan - pages 75-78.

Lacan was a French Psychoanalyst who felt that Freud had been misinterpreted by his followers. In his return to Freud he was to be influenced by the idea of structuralism, partly the anthropology of Levi-Strauss and the signifier/signified split. It is traditional to point out that Lacan is difficult and that some of the translations of his work are poor, but in the transcripts of his seminars he also emerges as a very witty person.

Lacan solves one criticism that can be aimed at Freud's versions of the Oedipus complex: what bout single parent or same-sex families who seem to be able to produce well-adjusted individuals? The father is here replaced by the phallus - also a signifier for our patriarchal society - and the Name of the Father, which functions with the threat of castration. Anyone - an uncle, a stepfather, a woman, even the mother - can function as the phallus.

The child desires to be desired by the mother but the mother desires the phallus. The child therefore attempts to become a phallus for the mother and to become the centre of her world. The child fails and the result differs according to sex. The male is reassured that even if he's failed now, one day all this will be his, he may yet become the phallus. In the meantime, he has the compensation of language, which Lacan calls the symbolic order. The female cannot fully access the symbolic order (which is patriarchal) and can only console herself wit thoughts of a time before she was castrated ... But this, perhaps, is to get ahead of ourselves.

The Mirror Phase And The Imaginary

For Lacan, we are born too soon. We can't walk, talk or see. We begin as broken people. At some point, however, we encounter an image of ourselves in a mirror and begin to identify ourselves as a distinct person in the world, separate from others. The image seems to be better than us and is external to ourselves, so this identification is problematic in itself. This process is the Mirror Phase and it allows us to enter into the realm of the Imaginary - with the emphasis begin on the idea of the image.

This Mirror Phase can act as a metaphor for what we do in the cinema - and this idea was developed by Christian Metz. We sit in the dark, quietly (Metz clearly doesn't go to your average multiplex), and don't move, whilst watching an image of a person who is much, bigger, stronger, more intelligent, braver and more resourceful than ourselves. The mirror of the cinema screen doesn't reflect us back but shows whom we'd like to be.

The Symbolic Order And The Real
As part of the Mirror Phase the individual becomes anchored in language - he or she is spoken to or spoken of, and is located in time, space and language. This language it so be understood in terms of Saussure's network of signifiers and signifieds, as explored in Chapter 5. Signifiers can be exchanged for other signifiers in an endless chain of signification. 
After the child has gone through the Mirror Phase, the Oedipus complex follows and the child faces the signifier of the phallus or Name Of The Father. The male child emerges rom this and can enter the Symbolic Order - one day he will be associated with the phallus, but in the meantime he must make do with the system of exchange that includes the patriarchal social system. In contrast, the female child can only console herself with the (fake) memory of the time before she was castrated, when she was associated with the phallus, and cannot fully enter into the Symbolic Order.
From a feminist point of view, this is as problematic as Freud's analysis, but some feminists such as Julia Kristeva have argued that women must find their own, non-patriarchal order or language of babble, which she calls the semiotic. Most films follow a masculine structure, a liner narrative which begins with a disruption to the social order, and then various attempt to reinstate it successfully. A feminine structure might be different - see for example the works of Sally Porter and Jane Campion, or even Derek Jarman, where episode outweighs the entire story. 
Aside from the imaginary and the Symbolic, Lacan posits the dimension of the Real, which is that which exists before and beyond language, and cannot be symbolised. The Real is the moment when Tyler Durden is a unified whole before his breakdown, or the flash frames which intervene in the first half of the film, or the moment when you appear to see the edges of the film.

Youtube video's explaining

References
-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan
-) A Passage from 'The Pocket Essential Film Studies' Book, refers to theory Lacan - pages 75-78 (may 2005 Andrew M. Butler)
-) Main information from One Drive powerpoints on Kec Moodle.
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agTYUU4gTOo (September 2016, 'Then & Now')
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkAXsR5WINc (September 2009, 'YaleCourses')