J4
92
Ecrits
concretely defined as that of the "superego," represents—regarding both the
ideal definition of moral conscience and the functional abstraction of so-called
reactions of opposition and imitation—progress that can only be compared to
that provided in the physical sciences by the relationship "weight divided by
volume" when it replaced the quantitative categories heavy and light.
The elements of ^positive determination were thus introduced between psychical realities that a relativistic definition has allowed us to objectify. This
determination is dynamic or relative to the facts regarding desire.
It was possible in this way to establish a scale for the constitution of man's
objects of interest, and especially for those, which are prodigiously diverse,
-that remain an enigma, if psychology in theory posits reality such as knowledge constitutes it: anomalies of emotion and drive, idiosyncrasies of attraction and repulsion, phobias and panic attacks, nostalgias and irrational wills;
personal curiosities, selective collecting, inventions of knowledge, and job
vocations.
On the other hand, a classification of what one might call the "imaginary
posts" that constitute the personality was defined, posts which are distributed
and in which the images mentioned above as informing development-^the id,
the egoy and the archaic and secondary instances of the superego—are composed according to their types.
Two questions arise here: how is the reality to which man's knowledge is
universally attuned constituted by these images, these objects of interest? And
how is the / constituted, in which the subject recognizes himself, by his typical identifications?
Freud answers these two questions by again moving onto metapsychological ground. He posits a "reality principle" whose role in his theory I propose
to critique. But before doing so, I must first examine what has been provided
by the studies that have been contributing to the new psychological science,
alongside Freud's discipline, regarding the reality of the image and forms of
knowledge. These will constitute the two parts of my second article.
Marienbad and Noirmoutier, August-October 1936
;
I
• -I
,1 ,1
T h e Mirror Stage as Formative
of the
93
/Function'
as R e v e a l e d in P s y c h o a n a l y t i c E x p e r i e n c e
Delivered on July 17, 1949, in Zurich at the Sixteenth
International Congress of Psychoanalysis
I;
The conception of the mirror stage I introduced at our last congress thirteen'
years ago, having since been more or less adopted by the French group, seems
worth bringing to your attention once again—especially today, given the light
it sheds on the / function in the experience psychoanalysis provides us of it.
It should be noted that this experience sets .us at odds with any philosophy
directly stemming from the cogito.
Some of you may recall the behavioral characteristic I begin with that is
explained by a fact of comparative psychology: -the human child, at an age
when he is for a short while, but for a while nevertheless,"outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence, can already recognize his own image as
such in a mirror. This recognition is indicated by the illuminative mimicry of
iheAAa-Erleinis^ which Kohler considers to express situational apperception,
an essential moment in the act of intelligence.
Indeed, this act, far from exhausting itself, as in the case of a monkey, in
eventually acquired control over the uselessness of the.image, immediately
gives rise in a child to a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences
the relationship between the movements made in the image and the reflected
environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it duplicates—
namely, the child's own body, and the persons and even things around him.
This event can take place, as we know from Baldwin's work, from the age
of six months on; its repetition has often given me pause to reflect upon the
striking spectacle of a nursling in front of a mirror who has not yet mastered
94
j6
95
Ecrits
walking, or even standing, but who—though held tightly by some prop, human
or artificial (what, in France, we call a trotte-bebe [a soil of walker])—overcomes, in a flutter of jubilant activity, the constraints of his prop in order to
adopt a slightly leaning-forward position and take in an instantaneous view
of the image in order to fix it in his mind.
In my view, this activity has a specific meaning up to the age of eighteen
months, and reveals both a libidinal dynamism that has hitherto remained problematic and an ontological structure of the human world that fits in with my
reflections on paranoiac knowledge.
It suffices to understand the mirror stage in this context as an identification,
in the full sense analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that
takes place in the subject when he assumes |W«me] an image—an image that
is seemingly predestined to have an effect at this phase, as witnessed by the
use in analytic theory of antiquity's term, "imago."
The jubilant assumption [assomption] of his specular image by the kind of
being—still trapped in his motor impotence and nursling dependence—the
little man is at the infans stage thus seems to me to manifest in an exemplary
situation the symbolic matrix in which the / i s precipitated in a primordial form,
prior to being objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and
before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject.
This form would^ moreover, have to be called the "ideal-I"'—if we wanted
to translate it into a familiar register—^-in the sense that it will also be the rootstock of secondary identifications, this latter term subsuming the libidinal normalization functions. But the important point is that this form situates the
agency known as the ego, prior to its social determination, in a fictional direction that will forever remain irreducible for any single individual or, rather,
that will only asymptotically approach the subject's becoming, no matter how
successful the dialectical syntheses by which he must resolve, as I, his discordance with his own reality.
For the total form of his body, by which the subject anticipates the maturation of his power in a mirage,1 is given to him only as a gestalt, that is, in an
exteriority in which, to be sure, this form is more constitutive than constituted,
but in which, above all, it appears to him as the contour of. his stature that
freezes it and in a symmetry that reverses it, in opposition to .the turbulent
movements with which the subject feels he animates it. Through these two
aspects of its appearance, this gestalt—whose power [pre'gnance] should be
considered linked to the species, though its motor style is as yet unrecognizable^—symbolizes the / ' s mental permanence, at the same time as it prefigures
its alienating destination. This gestalt is also replete with the correspondences
that unite the /with the statue onto which man projects himself, the phantoms
The Mirror Stage as Formative of the / Function
77
that dominate him, and the automaton with which the world of his own making tends to achieve fruition in an ambiguous relation.
Indeed, for irriagos—whose veiled faces we analysts see emerge in our daily
experience and in the penumbra of symbolic effectiveness2—the specular image
seems to be the threshold of the visible world, if we take into account the mirrored disposition of the imago of one's own body in hallucinations and dreams,
whether it involves one's individual features, or even one *s infirmities or object
projections; or if we take note of the role of the mirror apparatus in the appearance of doubles, in which psychical realities manifest themselves that are, moreover, heterogeneous.
The fact that a gestalt may have formative effects on an organism is attested
to by a biological experiment that is so far removed from the idea of psychical causality that it cannot bring itself to formulate itself in such terms. The
experiment nevertheless acknowledges that it is a necessary condition for the
maturation of the female pigeon's gonad that the pigeon see another member
of its species, regardless of its sex; this condition is so utterly sufficient that
the same effect may be obtained by merely placing a mirror's reflective field
near the individual. Similarly, in the case of the migratory locust, the shift within
a family line from the solitary to the gregarious form can be brought about
by exposing an individual, at a certain stage of its development, to the exclusively visual action of an image akin to its ownj provided the movements of
this image sufficiently resemble those characteristic of its species. Such facts
fall within a realm of homeomorphic identification that.is itself subsumed
within the question of the meaning of beauty as formative and erogenous.
But mimetic facts, understood as heteromorphic identification, are of just
as much interest to us insofar as they raise the question of the signification of
space for living organisms—psychological concepts hardly seeming less
appropriate for shedding light here than the ridiculous attempts made to reduce
these facts to the supposedly supreme law of adaptation. We need but recall
how Roger Caillois (still young and fresh from his break with the sociological school at which he trained) illuminated ;the subject when, with the term
"legendary psychasthenia," he subsumed morphological mimicry within the
derealizing effect of an obsession with space.
As I'myself have shown, human knowledge is more independent than animal knowledge from the force field of desire because of the social dialectic
that structures human knowledge as paranoiac;3 but what limits it is the "scant
reality" surrealistic unsatisfaction denounces therein. These reflections lead
me to recognize in the spatial capture manifested by the mirror stage, the effect
in man, even prior to this social dialectic, of an organic inadequacy of his natural reality—assuming we can give some meaning to the word "nature."
96
7S
Ecrits
The Mirror Stage as Formative of the /Function
The function of the mirror stage thus turns out, in my view, to be a particular case of the function of imagos, which is to establish a relationship between
an organism and its reality^—or, as they say, between the InnenweU and-the
Umwelt.
metaphors for which arise spontaneously, as if deriving from the subject's very
symptoms, to designate the mechanisms of obsessive neurosis: inversion, isolation, reduplication, undoing what has been done, and displacement.
But were I to build on these subjective data alone—were I to so much as
free them from the experiential condition that makes me view them as based
on a language technique—my theoretical efforts would remain exposed to the
charge of lapsing into the unthinkable, that of an absolute subject. This is why
I have sought, in the present hypothesis grounded in a confluence of objective data, a method of symbolic reduction as my guiding grid.
It establishes a genetic order in ego defenses, in accordance with the wish
formulated by Anna Freud in the first part of her major book, and situates (as
against a frequently expressed prejudice) hysterical repression and its returns
at a more archaic stage than obsessive inversion and its isolating processes,
situating the latter as prior to the paranoiac alienation that dates back to the
time at which the specular / turns into the social /.
This moment at which the mirror stage comes to an end inaugurates,
through identification with the imago of one's semblable and the drama of
primordial jealousy (so well brought out by the Charlotte Buhler school in
cases of transitivism in children), the dialectic that will henceforth link the /
to socially elaborated situations.
It is this moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge [savoir]
into being mediated by the other's desire, constitutes its objects in an abstract
equivalence due to competition from other people, and turns the /into an apparatus to which every instinctual pressure constitutes a danger, even if it corresponds to a natural maturation process. The very normalization of this
maturation is henceforth dependent in man on cultural intervention, as is exemplified by the fact that sexual object choice is dependent upon the Oedipus
complex.
In light of my conception, the term "primary narcissism," by which analytic doctrine designates the libidinal investment characteristic of this
moment, reveals in those who invented it a profound awareness of semantic
latencies. But it also sheds light on the dynamic opposition between this libido
and sexual libido, an opposition they tried to define when they invoked
destructive and even death instincts in order to explain the obvious relationship between narcissistic libido and the alienating /function, and the aggressiveness deriving therefrom in all relations with others, even in relations
involving aid of the most good-Samaritan variety.
In man, however, this relationship to nature is altered by a certain dehiscence at the very heart of the organism, a primordial Discord betrayed by the
signs of malaise and motor uncoordination of the neonatal months. The objective notions of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal tracts and of
certain humoral residues of the maternal organism in the newborn confirm
my view that we find in man a veritable specific prematurity ofbirth.
97
Let us note in passing that this fact is recognized as such by embryologists,
under the heading "fetalization," as determining the superiority of the so-called
higher centers of the central nervous system, and especially of the cerebral
cortex which psychosurgical operations will lead us to regard as the intraorganic mirror.
This development is experienced as a temporal dialectic that decisively projects the individual's formation into history: the mirror stage is a drama whose
internal pressure pushes precipitously from insufficiency to anticipation—and,
for the subject caught up in the lure of spatial identification, turns out fantasies that proceed from a fragmented image of the body to what I will call an
"orthopedic" form of its totality—and to the finally donned armor of an alienating identity that will mark his entire mental development with its rigid structure. Thus, the shattering of the Innenwelt to Umwelt circle gives rise to an
inexhaustible squaring of the ego's audits.
This fragmented body—another expression I have gotten accepted into the
French school's system of theoretical references—is regularly manifested in
dreams when the movement of an analysis reaches a certain level of aggres^
sive disintegration of the individual-it then appears in the form of disconnected limbs or of organs exoscopically represented, growing wings and
taking up arms for internal persecutions that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch
fixed for all time in painting, in their ascent in the fifteenth century to the imaginary zenith of modern man. But this form turns out to be tangible even at the
organic level, in the lines of "fragilization" that define the hysteric's fantasmatic anatomy, which is manifested in schizoid and spasmodic symptoms.
Correlatively, the /formation is symbolized in dreams by a fortified camp,
or even a stadium—distributing, between the arena within its walls and its outer
border of gravel-pits and marshes, two opposed fields of battle where the subject bogs down in his quest for the proud, remote inner casde whose form (sometimes juxtaposed in the same scenario) strikingly symbolizes the id. Similarly,
though here in the mental sphere, we find fortified structures constructed, the
79
The fact is that they encountered that existential negativity whose reality
is so vigorously proclaimed by the contemporary philosophy of being and
n
othingness.
98
99
So
1
I
I
;
IOO
Ecrits
Unfortunately, this philosophy grasps that negativity only within the limits of a self*-sufficiency of consciousness, which, being one of its premises,
ties the illusion of autonomy in which it puts its faith to the ego's constitutive
misrecognitions. While it draws considerably on borrowings from psychoanalytic experience, this intellectual exercise culminates in the pretense of
grounding an existential psychoanalysis.
At the end of a society's historical enterprise to no longer recognize that
it has any but a utilitarian function, and given the individual's anxiety faced
with the concentration-camp form of the social link whose appearance seems
to crown this effort, existentialism can be judged on the basis of the justifications it provides for the subjective impasses that do, indeed, result therefrom:
a freedom that is never so authentically affirmed as when it,is within the
walls of a prison; a demand for commitment that expresses the inability of
pure consciousness to overcome any situation; 'a voyeuristic-sadistic idealization of sexual relationships; a personality that achieves self-realization
only in suicide; and a consciousness of the other that can only be satisfied by
Hegelian murder.
These notions are opposed by the whole of analytic experience, insofar as
it teaches us not to regard the ego as centered on the perception-consciousness
system or as organized by the "reality principle"—the expression of a scientific bias most hostile to the dialectic of knowledge—-but,, rather, to take as
our point of departure the function ofmisrecognition that characterizes the ego
in all the defensive structures so forcefully articulated by Anna Freud. For,
while Verneinung [negation] represents the blatant form of that function,its
effects remain largely latent as long as they are not illuminated by some
reflected light at the level of fate where the id manifests itself."
The inertia characteristic of the / formations can thus be understood as
providing the broadest definition of neurosis, just as the subject's capture by
his situation gives us the most general formulation of madness—the kind found
within the asylum walls as well as the kind that deafens the world with its sound
and fury.
The sufferings of neurosis and psychosis provide us schooling in the pas1
sions of the soul, just as the balance arm of the psychoanalytic scales—when
we calculate the angle of its threat to entire communities—provides us with
an amortization rate for the passions of the city.
At this intersection of nature and culture, so obstinately scrutinized by the
anthropology of our times, psychoanalysis alone recognizes the knot of imaginary servitude that love must always untie anew or sever.
For such a task we can find no promise hi altruistic feeling, we who lay bare
The Mirror Stage as Formative of the /Function
81
the aggressiveness that underlies the activities of the philanthropist, the idealist, the pedagogue, and even the reformer.
In the subject to subject recourse we preserve, psychoanalysis can accompany the patient to the ecstatic limit of the "Thou art that" where the cipher
of his mortal destiny is revealed to him, but it is not in our sole power as practitioners to bring him to the point where the true journey begins.
Notes
1.1 have let stand the peculiar translation I "L'efficacite symbolique," in Revue de I'hisadopted in this article for Freud's IdealIch [je-toire des religions CXXXV, 1 (1949): 5-27.
ideal], without further comment except to say 3. See, on this point, the texts that follow,
that I have not maintained it since.
pages 111 and 180 [Ecrits 19(56].
2. See Claude Levi-Strauss' essay, entitled
27*
Translator's Endnotes
begin with 2, only they can appear at Time 3 older medical meanings, including irritations,
if there is a y or a p at Time 1. These two syn-inflammations, and slight constipations.
tactic rules are shown on the bottom line of the (52,6) Depasse de beaucoup en etendue
AA Distribution.
(extends far beyond) also evokes Descartes'
(50,2) The arrows in Tables Q and 0 pres- extension, given the appearance of matiere
ent all 16 combinations of the four letters (matter) at the beginning of the same sentence.
paired up two by two (the short arrows in
(53,2) On defiles, cf. Freud's "defile of conTable Q give six pairs, aS, 66, 8y, yp, pp, andsciousness" in-i"/; II, 291;
Pa, while the long arrows give ay and ya, for
(54,2) See the general note on "oblativity"
a total of eight; the other eight are found in at the beginning of the translator's endnotes.
Table O), where thefirstletter in each pair is
(54.9) Note that the usual French typosituated at Time 1 and the second at Time 4. graphic convention for quotes is « and ».
The second line in each table shows which let- (55.10) Es in German means it; das Es is the
ter is excluded at both Times 2 and 3 from each id. Disjoint (disjoint) could also be rendered as
of the. four pairs found in the line directly "disjunctive" or "disjoined."
above it (e.g., 6 is excluded at Times 2 and 3 (55,1 l)GnV(grill) has other possible meanfrom a&, 66, 6y, and ay), while the third line ings as well, including an openwork fence
in each table shows which letter is excluded at upstream of a sluice gate, an openwork floor
Time 2 and which at Time 3 from each of the above the loft of a theater stage, and an openfour pairs found above it in the top line of the work fairing (orfilleting)worksite.
table (e.g., a is excluded at Time 2 and y is
(56,4) The "attempt" here seems to be to
excluded at Time 3 from a6, 66, 67, and ay). reformulate the L schema as the L chain.
(50,4) Actualiti (actuality) also refers in
(56,fnl) See Abbe de Choisy, Memoires dt
French to that which is current or in the pres- VAbbede Choisy habilleen femme (Paris: Merent. // (it), often repeated here, grammatically cure de France, 1979); in English, see The
refers to parcours subjectif (subjective trajec-Transvestite Memoirs of the Abbe de Choisy and
tory), but might better be rendered as "the sub- the Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Bonneville
ject." Given the date of the text, one might be (London: Peter Owen, 1994).
inclined to translate reel as "reality" here
(56,fn2) The "convention" Lacan adds here
instead of as "real." However, a comparison functions as follows: the periods function as
of the Ecrits 1966 text with the original pub- blanks to be filled by either symbol, lorO. 1.1
lished in 1956 shows that this section of the text is thus to be read as 111 or 101, 1.0 as 110 or
was completely rewritten for the 1966 publi- 100, and so on. I have changed the 1—3 Netcation.
work so that the order in which terms are added
(50,fnl) The only place where I have been corresponds to that of the a, p, y, 6 Network.
able to find the verb quadrer (situates in quad- (58,4) Frisure (folds) usually refers to curls,
rants) is in Cotgrave's 1611 Dictionarie of as in curly hair. Here it seems to refer to the
French and English, where it is defined as "to
sulci of the brain.
square, suit, be fit, agree, or stand well with."
(59,1) The "general narrator" says, "It is
Nevertheless, these do not seem to correspond merely. . .an identification of the reasoner's
to the likely meaning intended here, which is intellect with that of his opponent." Lacan
that of framing or placing in quadrants.
seems to equate intellect with reasoning here.
(60,6) In addition to meaning die (the sin(51,6) Lacan seems to be referring to the fact
that the excluded letters in lines 2 and 3 line up gular of dice) and thimble, de is also, in the
"directly" under the same letters in line 1 of words of Le Robert; Dictionnaire Historique de
Table Q, whereas they line up in a "crossed" la Langue Francaise, "one of the most producmanner in Table 0 (the ones to the left in lines tive prefixes in the French language, indicating
2 and 3 corresponding to the ones to the right that an action takes place in reverse or is
annulled."
in line 1 and vice versa).
(52,2) Echauffements (excitations) also has (61,1) See Goethe's Faust.
Translator's Endnotes
773
NOTES TO " O N MY ANTECEDENTS'
(65,4) Evolution Psychiatnque was also ror
the stage at length in Seminar VIII, chapters
name of a journal which published a number 23-24.
of Lacan's early works.
(70,7) It seems possible to also read Lacan's
(65,7) Raisonnants (related to rationality) French here, Quoi que couvre I'imagepourtant
can mean rational, accessible to reason, reason- (Regardless of what covers the image, neverable, logical, or affirming the primacy of reason. theless), as "Regardless of what the image nev(65,fn2) Lacan may have Paulette Houdyer ertheless covers." Lacan seems to deliberately
in mind; see her L'affaire des soeurs Papin:change
Le the usual terminology later in the sendiable dans lapeau (Paris: Julliard, 1966). tence by inverting the adjectives, saying "the
return of the second phase" instead
(66.4) See Paul Eluard, Poesie involontairedepressive
et
of "the second return of the depressive phase."
poesie intentionnelle (Paris: Seghers); cf. Ecrits
1966,168.
(71,1) Reading personne ne saurau (no one
(69.5) See the last paragraph of "Beyond the knows) for personne se saurait.
'Reality Principle,'" Ecrits 1966, 92.
(72,1) La psychanalyse, didactique (une vir(69,9) Causalisme is the doctrine that science
gule entrej, rendered here simply as "Training
seeks causes and not merely regular antecedents. Analysis," literally means "Psychoanalysis,
(70,5) Lacan develops this aspect of the mir- training (with a comma in between)."
NOTES TO "BEYOND THE 'REALITY PRINCIPLE'
(73,4) As Lacan indicates (Edits 1966, 69, introduced it in 1901.
88,90, and 92), this article was intended to have (83.1) Ne Hen vouloir dire idiomatically
two parts, but the second part was never means not to mean anything. See Charles
written.
Blondel, La conscience morbide (Paris: F. Alcan,
(76,3) The Latin here goes back to the 1914).
Scholastic philosophers, and can be rendered
(84.2) Les corse (gives them consistency)
more or less as "Nothing is found in the intel- could also be rendered as "strengthens them,"
lect that was not before in the senses." Hobbes "complicates them," or "makes them more
and Locke both quote it, and Leibniz gave it the interesting." Hors du sujet (outside the subject)
proviso, nisi intellectus ipse, meaning "except
evokes hors sujet, which means off the topic, not
the intellect itself."
relevant to the subject at hand.
(77.1) See Taine's De I'intelUgence (1870), (86.3) See Plutarch's chapter on Caesar in
which also contains the term "polypary of his Lives.
images" cited on the next page.
(86,5) See Ignace Meyerson, "Les Images,"
(80.2) Pithiatisme (pithiatism) was the Journal de psyckologie normale et pathologique
term used to designate a set of non-organic XVI (1929): 625-709.
problems that could be cured or reproduced
(88,1) See Freud's use of the term
by suggestion and that were considered to be "hominization" in SE XXIII, 75 and 153; it
an integral part of hysteria. Joseph Babinsky refers there to the process of becoming human.
NOTES TO " T H E MIRROR STAGE"
(93,1) Lafonction duje (/ function) could was published in 1917, thefirstEnglish edition
also be rendered as "the function of the /" in 1925.
throughout this article.
(93,6) A reference to the work of James
(93,4) See Wolfgang Kohler, The MentalityMark Baldwin (1861-1934), the American
of Apes, trans. Ella winter (London: Routledgephilosopher and psychologist.
& Kegan Paul, 1927); thefirstGerman edition
(94,1) Le fixer (fix it in his mind) can mean
774
Translator's Endnotes
a number of things, including to stare at it, pin lation of Freud's Drang, one of the components
it down, and fix it in the sense in which a pho- of•. the drive; see SE XIV, 122. Quadrature
tographer uses fixer to develop a picture.
(squaring) is the French term for what is referred
(94,3) See general note above on assumer •to in English as "the squaring of the circle" (la
and assomption.
quadrature du cercle). Recolement (audit) is a
(95.1) Un relief de stature (the contour of his
legal term designating the operation of reading
stature) could instead be understood as "the a witness' deposition back to him or her to see
contour of the stature." In gestalt theory, preg- if he or she approves of it. In financial contexts
nance refers to the power forms have to imposeit can also be translated as "audit," "checking,"
themselves upon perception or force them- "reexamination," or "verification" (of accounts
selves upon us.
or inventory); this could lead to the following
possible translation: "the inexhaustible squaring
(95.2) Disposition en miroir (mirrored disposition) implies the right-left reversal charac- (or setding) of the ego's accounts."
teristic of mirror images.
(97.3) Corps morcele (fragmented body) is
(95.3) On the sexual maturation of pigeons, sometimes rendered as "body in pieces."
see L. Harrison Matthews, "Visual Stimulation
(98,1) Annulation (undoing what has been
and Ovulation in Pigeons" in the Proceedingsdone) might ordinarily be translated as cancelof the-Royal Society, Series B, 126 (1939):lation, rendering null and void, or invalidation.
557-560. On the development of the migratory Here, however, it seems that Lacan is directly
locust, see R. Chauvin's work in Annales de lareferring to the mechanism of "undoing"
Societe entomologique de France (1941,(something
third
that has been done) found in obsesquarter): 133,272. These and other references sive neurosis. See, in particular, SEX, 235-36
are provided in Lacan's paper "Some Reflec- and 243, and i^XX, 1.19-20; in the latter, Strations on the Ego," IJP XXXIV, 1 (1953): chey indicates that he is translating Freud's
11—17, and in "Remarks on Psychical Causal- ungeschehenmachen, which literally means
ity" in Ecrits 1966, 189 and 190-91.
"making unhappened."
(95,fnl) In English, see "The Effectiveness
(98.4) See Charlotte Buhler, From Birth to
of Symbols" in Structural Anthropology, trans.
Maturity: An Outline of the Psychological
Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf Development of the Child (London: Kegan
(New York: Basic Books, 1963).
Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1935).
(96.2) See Roger Caillois, "Mimetisme et
(98,6) The French term primaire (rendered
psychasthenic legendaire," Le,. minotaure VIIin the standard English translation of narcis(1935); in English, see "Mimicry and Legendary sismeprimaire by "primary") also has the conPsychasthenia," October XXXI (1984): 17-^32. notation of primal or primordial.
(96.3) Determine (limits) could also ,,be (99.1) See Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and
translated as "specifies," "defines," "decides," Nothingness.
or "fixes." Andre Breton introduced the term
(99.2) Lacan's creation here, self-suffisance
peu de realm (scant reality) in his 1924 "Intro-(self ^sufficiency), also suggests a note of selfduction au discours sur le peu de realite"; see complacency, self-conceit, and smugness.
Point dujour (Paris: GalHmard, 1970); in Eng- (99.3) Concentratlonnaire (concentrationlish, see "Introduction to the Discourse on the camp) is an adjective that was coined after World
Paucity of Reality" in Break of Day, trans. War II to describe life in concentration camps.
Mark Polizzotti and Mary Ann Caws (Lincoln: In the hands of certain writers it became, by
University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 3-20.
extension, applicable to many aspects of life. In
(96.4) See Jakob von Uexkull, Umwelt und "Paris Alive: The Republic of Silence" Sartre
wrote "Never were we [the French] freer than
Innenwelt der Tiere (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1909).
(97.1) The term "fetalization" (also spelled under the German occupation" (Atlantic
"foetalization") was introduced by Louis Bolk; Monthly [December 1944]: 39-40).
see Das Problem der Menschwerdung (Jena:
(99,6) See "The Passions of the Soul," in The
Gustav Fischer, 1926).
Philosophical Works of Descartes (Cambridge:
(97.2) Poussee (pressure) is the usual trans-Cambridge University Press, 1967), 331-427.
Translator's Endnotes
775
NOTES TO "AGGRESSIVENESS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS'
(103.2) Lacan's use of "bipolar" here is not a possible contradictions of the single proposireference to the contemporary psychiatric label. tion, "I love him" (SEXll, 63-64). The three
(105.3) Angustiae anguishes or narrow principal forms of paranoia Freud discusses
there are jealousy, erotomania, and persecution.
straits (of birth).
See Lacan's discussion of this in his "Discours
(106,3) The Republic, Book I, 336 ff.
de Rome" mAutres ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 2001),
(\Q7,2) Amour-propre: self-love, self-regard,
156—57. Desordre (disorder) can also be renself-esteem, vanity, or pride.
dered as "chaos" or "mess"; it is not a refer(108,3) Le redan et la chicane (stepping and
staggering technique) was a technique employed ence to the eponymous psychiatric notion. On
in military fortifications at the time of Louis the "beautiful soul," see Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
XIV. Fortifications a la Vauban (military fortification) were unassailable fortifications designed' Oxford University Press, 1977), 383.
by Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, 1633-1707.
(114,5) The Confessions of St. Augustine,
trans. J. G. Pilkington (New York: The Her(109.1) Prejudicielle (prior) is a legal term,
describing questions and costs associated with itage Press, 1963), 7. To translate the French
a legal judgment that must be handed down rendition of the Latin Lacan provides (perhaps
priorto the principal suit. It could also be trans-taken from a published French translation): "I
lated as "preliminary" or "prerequisite." See saw with my own eyes and knew very well an
infant in the grip of jealousy: he could not yet
Freud, "Negation" (Die Verneinung), SEXTX,
speak, and already he observed his foster
235.
(109.2) Complaisance (self-indulgence)brother, pale and with an envenomed look."
(116.2) Desarroi here means distress, confucould also be translated as "complacency."
sion, helplessness, complete disorganization,
(109,6) Une surface sans accidents (a smooth
surface) has no topographical relief or acci- and disarray.
(116.3) Here as elsewhere, Lacan uses represdental attributes.
(110.6) See Lacan's 1932 doctoral dissertation sion (now usually reserved in French for
"repression"-in the political sense) instead of the
published as De lapsychoseparanoiaque dansses
more usual refoulement (now reserved in French
rapports avec la personnalite (Paris: Seuil, 1980).
(110.7) Kakon: "bad (object)" in Greek. for "repression" in the psychoanalytic sense).
(117,2) See, in particular, SEXRl, 141^3.
(111.3) See-Pierre Janet, "Les sentiments
dans le delire de persecution," Journal de Psy- (117.4) See K. von den Steirien, Unter der
chologie XXIX (1932): 161-240 and 401-60. Natiirvolker Zentralbrasiliens (Berlin: Dietrich
(112.2) The French original of this text and Reiner, 1894), 305-45, and L. Levy-Bruhl, Les
fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures
Ecrits 1966 both read spectaculaire (spectacular) instead of speculaire three times in this (Paris: Alcan, 1910), 77-78.
article, whereas Lacan's other texts almost
(118,1) On identity, cf. Ecrits 1966, 213. "Je
always read speculaire (specular); spectaculaire
est un autre" ("I is an other") is from Rimshould probably be understood here in the sense baud's letter to Georges Izambard dated May
of "relating to or constituting a spectacle."
13, 1871. See Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 268.
(112.3) See H. Wallon, Les origines du car(118.5)
actere che\ I'enfant: Les Preludes du sentiment
de On oblativite (oblativity), see general note above.
personnalite (Paris: PUF, [1934] 1954).
(113.3) Einfiihlung is usually'rendered as (119,1) En libtrer I'altruisme (free altruism
"empathy," "understanding," or "sensitivity." from it) could also be translated as "free up its
(113.4) Sefixe a (fixates on) could also be altruism" or "free up the altruism therein." See
translated as "latches onto," "attaches himself Maxim 113, "H y a de bons manages, mais il n'y
en a point de delicieux," in La Rochefoucauld,
to," or "freezes himself in."
(114,4) See Freud's discussion of the three Maximes (Paris: Gamier Freres, 1967).